Franciscan Guest House

I love walking the grounds and learning about the history. It’s a converted hotel and guesthouse from a monastery, so the rooms are basic and have no frills. The people who run the place are amazing, and mostly of Lithuanian decent. It feels like a peaceful sanctuary and a hidden gem. It’s the only affordable place to stay in Kennebunkport, and only 1 mile from the Beach.

The people are very kind, and the grounds are beautiful. The rooms are showing their age, but everything is clean and works. They have a proposal with Kennebunkport to completely renovate the guest areas. An annoying neighbor is blocking it, apparently trying to extort the Franciscans to sell part of the property. Who extorts priests?

You can walk about 1/2 mi to the beach or 1/2 mile into town, which made it great not having to worry about parking. The grounds are beautiful and the location is excellent. This is a no frills hotel, but it was clean and had what we needed. We were on the second floor of the main building. There are NO elevators, so you need to be able to carry your bag upstairs. The bed was comfortable, though I would have liked fluffier pillows because these were a bit flat. Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate were available in the morning. We’d stay again.

The whole stay was depressing and uncomfortable. In over 40 years of business and personal travel, this may be the worst property I’ve stayed in. The room looked like a cheap uncle had tried to turn his basement into a living space in the 60s. The beds and linens felt and looked 40 years old, as did the bathroom, with its stand-in shower tub, suicidal shower curtain, and towels from the 1950s. The nylon bedding seems not to have been replaced in decades. Baseboards were nailed onto plywood and left unfinished and unpainted, and the TV’s electric cord came down through a hole in a plastic ceiling tile. The walls and ceilings were paper thin, and the outdated heating and A/C were noisy enough to keep me from sleeping. It seems whoever owns or runs this “hotel” has made no effort at all to update or maintain it and is simply cash cowing the location for all it’s worth. Even “cheap” hotels today should meet much better standards. In its current state, the Franciscan Guest house would be more honestly described as a hostel or dormitory. The owners should close it for a gut renovation or demolish it and leave the hospitality business altogether.