The Barclay Towers Resort Hotel

I arrived yesterday, and this is the dirtiest place I’ve ever stayed. The bathroom is gross, the water was stopped up, the floor was dirty, and the room smelled of grease and cigarettes. The bedroom TV doesn’t work, and the pots and pans still have food on them. I got maybe four hours of sleep on a rock-hard mattress with hard pillows. When we pulled out the sofa bed, the bedding had yellow stains and crumbs. They put the bed right by the main door in this “suite,” so you can’t get any sleep. I called the front desk about cancelling, but the person there said they weren’t authorized to do that. I called Priceline, who contacted the hotel, and I’m still waiting for a supervisor. Looking at the reviews, you’d think these problems would have been addressed. Housekeepers should know how to clean and sanitize a hotel room. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be working as housekeepers. I’ll never stay here again. There’s no comfort in this hotel.

The pictures on the site made the place look lovely and reasonably priced, so we had high hopes. When we arrived, the woman at the front desk was busy brushing her hair and acted as though our arrival was an inconvenience. She then had us sign a waiver saying we wouldn’t smoke in the room or on the balcony, but the room smelled like the home of someone who’d chain-smoked for years. The room was filthy. The photos I attached show what it looked like as soon as we walked in. At checkout, the woman at the desk was polite and professional. The evening desk staff were completely unprofessional and seemed annoyed when we asked for a few extra washcloths. One of them yelled into the back room for someone else to bring them, and we never got any. We also found a box of sex lube on the floor beside the bed.

The location is perfect, but the toilet barely flushed when we arrived. We figured we could work around it, then my son spotted bed bugs crawling on the pullout bed. They refused our refund request and moved us to another room. After we unpacked there, my son woke us early the next morning because he’d found more bed bugs. They still wouldn’t refund us and offered another room instead. The only “available” room they gave us was occupied by someone else. They moved us to a “premium” room, but by then we’d had enough and checked out early. The staff were rude and seemed not to care about the hassle or the time we wasted moving from room to room. I’m dealing with Booking.com about the refund. Update: I just spoke with Booking.com, and the hotel never refunded our money. I’ll be reporting the bed bugs to VA DHHS. I would not recommend staying here.

The beach location is great, the shower had good pressure and hot water, and the front desk staff were awesome. The Indian restaurant by the lobby serves really good food, and there are plenty of other places to eat nearby at different price points. Beds were okay, a little stiff but manageable. Rooms need updating, and small defects bring the rating down. Our AC unit was loud when starting up and shutting down. The phone in the room didn’t work, and some bathroom details were broken or missing. We got no room cleaning during our three days there. Also, the low price seemed to draw loud guests. On Friday 10/17 and Saturday 10/18, people in the hallway were very loud from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., waking us and keeping us up for hours. We had to call the front desk from our personal phones because the room phone didn’t work. You get what you pay for here. It’s not terrible if you can overlook the little room problems.