Hotel Balmoral

Avoid. Not near to anything. Hotel is locked until 3pm so we were left in the cold and rain. When we were let in and wanted to check in, the reception girl was too busy talking on her phone!!. Eventually got our key and got into small, but clean room. Awful old window that was drafty and not secure. Nowhere to hang coat. No complementary water as stated. Then went downstairs to wait for taxi to go to quayside and the receptionist was letting lots of very dodgy looking men in with hoods up and made me and my friend very uncomfortable. They obviously didn't work there as didn't know code to get in. Once in, looking through drawers to store cupboard. When we arrived back few hours later, they were all in reception with lots of crates of alcohol. All very strange and not at all welcoming or comfortable. Avoid at all costs.

The reception lady was very nice, polite and helpful. Check in was quick no issues. We had to stay somewhere during home renovations so we just wanted somewhere budget friendly and nearby, this was ideal. This is a basic hotel which for the price it is excellent, spotlessly clean and decorated/ maintained to a high standard. The room has everything you would want from a standard hotel room - hair dryer, kettle, tea and coffee, bath and shower gel, a safe, a dressing table, phone, alarm clock. The bathroom has a nice powerful shower and is all in working order, towels are clean and in good condition and plenty of toilet rolls. Although it is on a main road we had no complaints with noise from that or from other rooms and slept brilliantly. Wi-Fi is free and the TV has Netflix, YouTube. There is a large car park and there appears to be cctv, the staff take your vehicle registration. They give you a code for the front door on check in in case it is locked when you come and go. We had a ‘standard’ king room however the bed is massive and very comfortable. The window is nice and big and opens which is fantastic to let some air circulation as it is quite warm in the room. One thing to note is that there are only two sockets for the room at the desk so I would bring an extension if you need it. I didn’t get breakfast so can’t comment on it however I saw a review which said you can go for breakfast in the Indian restaurant Akbar’s next door but it smelled of Indian food which they don’t like, I mean come on how ******* can you be to go into an Indian restaurant and complain of the smell of curry? It’s like diving into the sea and complaining it’s too wet. I can say there is no smell at all in the hotel and there are multiple cafes/shops/takeaways on the same street, and the location is minutes away from town so you have no shortage of places to get something to eat. To summarise, I would definitely recommend this hotel, the location is ideal, you get a lot more than a premier inn or other similar priced no frills hotel, the rooms are lovely and it was actually cheaper for us to stay here!

We arrived in the morning as we wanted to have a wonder into the town centre, we were able to park in the hotel car park, we just told them our car registration. Checked in at 3, and they had to check if the room was cleaned, which it was. The room was OK, although we weren't given a spare toilet roll, so the toilet roll was gone by morning as it wasn't even a full roll. The hotel is very noisy and you can hear everything, woken up numerous times by guests in the corridors and the bed sloped in the centre so quite uncomfortable. Our bathroom kept getting a really bad smell of cigarette smoke that I assumed was coming through the vent from another room, maybe smoking. The smell came through the whole room, which wasn't nice. When we arrived we added breakfast for £7.50 pp, when we went down in morning we were shown to the attached restaurant akbars and told to take a seat, there was a tray of individual cerials, milk, yoghurts, fruit juices, jams, and chocolate chip Muffins. We were then asked if we would like tea or coffee and white or brown toast. I was under the impression it was a cooked breakfast from pictures on here from other travellers but it wasn't, had I have known I wouldn't have paid for breakfast we would have gone out for breakfast. I probably wouldn't stay here again for the price we paid. I have stayed in much nicer hotels.