Guest User
January 31, 2023
Pros: - Location; easy walking distance to the town of Tain - Ample parking in the gravel/grass area out front of the hotel - Pleasant staff; everyone smiled and tried to be helpful - Good internet (in our room it was very strong, not so good in other rooms per our traveling companions) - Breakfast; buffet and made-to-order eggs, etc. ample and well prepared - Dining room/dinner; well-prepared entrees with a nice menu - Hotel bar; small, quaint, cozy, and friendly Cons: - Very old hotel, much in need of a facelift/refresh throughout although it had lots of "character" and very beautiful woodwork throughout - Room: - Bathroom dirty (extensive mold/mildew on shower walls in tile grout (dark black lines visible as soon as you enter the bathroom)), open joints and cracks in the wall at floor baseboard and bottom of the tub; sink had several hairline cracks - beware of hot water at scalding temps from all taps - Room only set up for single occupancy when reserved for a couple (towels, service items, etc. missing for second person) - Bed had a very hard mattress, very hard and unpadded - Problem at check-in: - We made our reservation through *********** on April 12th for our September stay, and paid fully in advance on Aug 20th, upon arrival we were advised our reservation had been canceled on June 20th (but our full payment was processed by *********** on 8/20!!???), finally they "found" us a room for our 3-day stay, later advised "they had found the problem that caused this misunderstanding" (we experienced a very tense time when we were waiting to see if we would even have a room after we arrived at the end of a full day of air and car travel from the US!) - Housekeeping was fairly non-existent, the room was not cleaned at all during our stay, had to hunt down staff to get towels, etc. when needed (to be fair, we were advised at check-in that housekeeping would be only on request???). - Hallway smoke doors were kept closed constantly (probably a good practice given the age of the building) and hall lights were often turned off in the early evening making the hall to our room very dark to traverse by the light from hall windows only; yes energy conservation is important, but not by turning out lights when guests are still using hallways, etc. Overall we were disappointed in the poor cleanliness of our room and the poor preparation for our use of the room (towels, etc. missing); although some of these are little things that were corrected on request, it was the sum of the issues that made it particularly unsatisfactory especially considering that the rooms were not inexpensive. The staff there were universally friendly and pleasant, really nice people ! We very much wanted to love the place, but we have to be honest in our review for those like us who may be considering a stay in the future.