Evan Beard

Review of Dunraven Arms Hotel

The room was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (>26.5 Cel...

The room was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (>26.5 Celsius) as measured by the thermostat in the room, but this hotel has no air conditioning and we were not able to open the window for ventilation. This is because there is a spotlight advertising the hotel pointed directly at our window, so it was as bright as day with the window open. With the window open and the blinds closed as much as possible it was very bright in the room. When we called reception in the middle of the night the hotel told us that they could not turn the spotlight off. You can see the attached photos of the spotlight and the room's brightness at night. In addition, there was tremendous noise from the road (the hotel sits right on a fairly busy road) with the window open and lots of bugs attracted by the spotlight, so if you stay here you must choose between 80 degree temperatures or bright lights, bugs, and road noise. Honestly it's a hard choice with no good option. The hotel had no fans available and could suggest no other way to cool the room.

Otherwise:

- the bed was hard as a rock, also making it difficult to sleep. We asked for an extra comforter to put above the mattress but it never came
- The power outlets (at least the 110V ones and usb outlets that we needed) did not work. We informed the hotel and 4 different people came to try to fix them, reset the breaker, etc, but ultimately they said they were having electrical problems and were not able to fix them
- despite the hotel being hundreds of years old there is no air filtration whatsoever because the hotel uses a water-based heating system. If you try using a flashlight at night, you'll see dust levels consistent with > 50 micrograms per cubic meter of particulates, well above the dust recommended by the World Health Organization. Health conscience guests beware!

We were there for a wedding event - would recommend you reconsider if planning a wedding here.

Our experience was so bad that we decided to check out of the hotel after one night. I politely spoke with a man who identified himself as the manager and owner of the hotel to ask that he let us out of the next night's reservation, but he informed me that we should have just opened the window and he will still charge me for the next night. When I explained why we couldn't open the window, he said if he let us out of the remaining nights of our reservation he would have to do the same for the rest of he hotel. This made it clear to me that we were not the only ones who had a bad experience. The manager/owner was more concerned about the revenue from one additional night of forcing us to keep our remaining night of stay than doing the right thing and letting us out of what are clearly unsleepable conditions for many folks.