Castle Hill

Pleasant efficient staff and good studio with excellent facilities. A handy tip is that you can park overnight (6pm-8am) on the street right opposite the hotel for free, spaces are limited but I got one for both of the nights I stayed. Even if you pay for a few hours, it's cheaper than £20 per night the hotel charges.

The good: Clean, modern rooms (the Housekeeping Team should be commended as everything as spotless), inclusive continental breakfast (although didn't use) and nice bathroom facilities. The not so good: The air-con operates on a limited number of outdoor condensers, we found the room was 27.5c at night, and the AC cassette unit wasn't operating in 'cool' mode (although worked in 'heat' and 'fan' mode. We left it on 'fan' mode as having the window open at night was not an option (noisy in the city), but this resulted in the room becoming roasting hot to the point it was uncomfortable and made us ill. In the morning, we then found the 'cool' mode worked (guess that other guests had turned their split-units off, or had checked out) so cold air came in. It would be useful having a set of instructions explaining this to guests, given the fact the rooms can become hot. Couple of other minor niggles was the storage for bags in the hotel is writing your personal details on a label and then leaving them where anyone could walk in and take them (hardly secure), and the reception isn't manned (we arrived at 11am and fortunately the cleaner was able to tell us what we needed to do to store our luggage). The TV in the rooms don't have BBC iPlayer (or support AirPlay, only Chromecast - although this is a very minor point).

Room was clean, but basic. Very thin walls/ceiling: could hear a great deal of what was going on in the room above us until late in the evening. Breakfast was ok; nicely presented, but rather tasteless in my opinion. Quite a few options though. The spa and gym was a real mixed bag. Yes they have a full gym, but all the equipment is very old and in a dire need of servicing: most cables have warped on the machines so they are uneven. Yes it has a decent size pool, sauna, hot tub and steam room, but sauna automatically turned itself off at 7pm even though the centre was open until 8pm. The hot tub was quite disgusting and very chemically. Steam room was quite good. Male changing rooms were filthy. Staff were pleasant enough, some very friendly. As with many hotels, they do not take cash, but they also do not take Amex, which is ridiculous for a supposed upmarket hotel. I won’t be returning.