The Douglas Hotel

Horrible! This place is horrible now, whatever the photos show. They look like they were taken five years ago, when the hotel looked nice. Don’t trust the site pictures, trust the ones in reviews. People say you get what you pay for, but I’d rather pay more for better quality. I’ve rented seaside hotel rooms for the same price that were clean and nice, unlike this pigshed. The rooms were really dirty. The sheet looked as if someone had slept in the bed before me, and the carpet and walls were filthy. When I sat on the mattress, I could feel the hard bed base. My friend and I had two single rooms, but we couldn’t stay any longer, so we booked somewhere else straight away and left. The owner, manager or whoever didn’t answer our calls after we arrived.

The cleanliness was atrocious. There was dried sick in the toilet bowl, the carpet was filthy, and the bathroom ceiling was coming down. The shower head was held up with a cable tie. They said they’d upgraded me to a double room. Honestly, a park bench would have been an upgrade.

My friend and I were woken at 4 am by a man shouting for help and the fire alarm going off. The hotel had been broken into and an elderly man was attacked. We waited outside in the cold for an hour while emergency services arrived. We felt unsafe and completely ripped off, and nobody apologised or offered compensation. The room was awful too. There was a smashed mirror at the top of the stairs, then in our room the bathroom light didn’t work, the toilet was dirty and used, the wardrobe was broken and about to fall apart, and the sheets and headboard were stained. The side drawers were filthy and looked like they had tobacco inside, the sink handles were broken, and the carpets were stained. I asked to move. The second room was a little cleaner, but still not great. Do not stay here. I’ve never stayed anywhere this awful. Avoid it at all costs.

You don’t pay much, and you don’t get much. The carpet was stained, the space heater was broken, and the shower was finicky, either scalding hot or cold. There was no soap. Otherwise, it was fine. The fire alarm went off at 4 am, louder than anything I’ve ever heard. I called the number, and a guy came running down the road in his slippers within five minutes, so it wasn’t a terrible tragedy.