Carmelite Hotel

At check-in, I was advised that the bar & Resturant were both closed, the hotel is operating on room only, service users were council tenants, with several congregating in corridors, strong smell on the premises.

Very central

We had a nice stay at this hotel. It is located in town center close to everything. Also close to the train station. Good English breakfast.

Bizarre hotel in good location. Whole place felt grubby and poorly designed and furnished. Staff were asleep on chairs outside the rooms, really strange. No sense of customer service. Bed uncomfortable. Electricity and light switches hard to work out and weird. No free parking, no parking at all, even though they advertised it. Terrible.

Where do I start with the Carmelite? Parking - although it does say that there is parking, there's not - you have to park in one of the carparks either in the shopping centre or the train station. On arrival I actually though the hotel was closed as it was in darkness and the door was locked - when I eventually got in to the hotel I was met by 2 rather large security guards who didnt actually understand why i was there - a member of staff did appear and looked a but shocked when I said had a reservation - not surprised as the hotel seems to be a half way house for migrants/immigrants at the moment which is a shame as i can imagine it was a lovely place to stay in beforehand. Sleep was interrupted several times through the night by shouting coming from other rooms and kids in the corridors early in the morning. Not 100% sure if the security guards are to keep people out or to keep people in? On departure - no hotel staff around just the security guards so I just gave them the key and hot footed it out of there as quickly as possible, A real shame as like I said earlier, this hotel was probably fantastic but it just needs some care and attention and to get back to being a proper hotel - I really do think that there should be something mentioned to people before booking the situation regarding their live-in guests/inmates.

Staff were friendly enough and my room was fine. Disappointed that there was no bar or restaurant facilities as this wasn’t stated in the app. Felt a bit unwelcoming as the front door was always locked, even during the day. Breakfast was really good though, the chef can make a good omelette!!

The place felt strange on arrival. There was a lot of randoms hanging around in the main reception area. I later realised that these were refugees/immigrants awaiting social housing and staying in temporary hotel accommodation on site. I felt uncomfortable as a solo female traveller being what appeared to be the only paying guest on the premises. That said, the staff were friendly and accommodate my request to move rooms to a room with a bath. Rooms dated but comfortable. Stayed on a room only basis.

Looked amazing online, however in reality it's a little run down. We stayed in the Cabanel Suite which is one of the best rooms and can tell it badly needed refreshed. Paint needed touched up, loose carpet, really noisy annoying fan in the bathroom. Sleep wasnt great, kept hearing doors shut and there was a big draft at the window where the bed was so was cold. Wasn't the cleanest. The bath had a lot of brown and pink dirty marks? Upon arrival it felt a little intimidating as there was always security guards at the front door. It turns out this hotel is currently housing a lot of refugees / illegal immigrants? We did not see anyone else there who I'd consider to be a paying guest so the atmosphere was pretty poor.