Quest Wellington

The location was the only thing going for it. The rooms were large, but the furniture looked old, tired, and ugly, like it came from a second-hand shop in the 70s. Street noise was clearly audible and distracting, even on a Sunday night.

At 5:15 on a Saturday afternoon, arriving at a big city hotel and finding a huge locked door and an intercom was not what we expected. We checked that we had the right address and that this really was the entrance, then tried the intercom. We could hear someone ask our name and read from a script, but between the quiet speaker, traffic noise, and my not-great hearing, we missed most of it. Some people eventually came out and let us in. We went through a dark passage to an empty room with a desk and found an envelope with my name on it. I guessed correctly that it probably held my room key. Later, we called the external help desk about the car. The person who answered wasn’t a Quest employee and read from a script about “free street parking,” but couldn’t say which street. We never found it. If anyone’s had a worse introduction to a hotel, I’d like to hear it.

It was quiet, and the bed was good. The room was big and, for the price, very good value in a historic building with a central location. It’s a bit old, though. A few small annoyances: the chairs sat too low for the table, the power sockets nearest the table were hidden behind the wardrobe, and there were very few TV programmes.

For me, the basin tap was tricky: the water went from a weak flow to soaking the floor with only about an eighth of a turn. The mattress also felt a bit lumpy for my old body. Those are personal gripes, not reasons I’d tell anyone to avoid this lovely Art Deco styled hotel. The room was spacious, with a large bathroom, a washer-dryer combo, and great hot water pressure. I couldn’t find much else wrong with it.