Torc Hotel

American motel style easy driving distance to town and national park. Very good breakfast and dinner food well priced. Good value. Don’t expect AC, fans or computer ready outlets.

Below average. It was clean and breakfast was ok. However the room was cramped, bathroom small and dark. Paper cups for coffee in the room and kettle hidden inside the cupboard. Staff very strange. Very expensive for the quality.

Honestly from the moment we arrived at this hotel we were NOT impressed and it kept going further downhill. Thank goodness we were only here for one night! Our tour group booked this hotel for us. Upon arrival the first thing we learned is that there are no electric key cards but actual metal keys (like your house key). I normally wouldn’t have an issue with this but typically this means its a VERY old hotel and that was a correct assumption. For starters, thick carpet everywhere which makes rolling a suitcase impossible, especially a full sized one. One tiny elevator that only fit a max of 4 people with their luggage and it was in the lobby meaning if your room was anywhere else you’d have to walk a pretty long distance once you reached your floor. You could take the stairs but they were very narrow and carpeted and getting a suitcase up or down was difficult. We were a tour group of 16 so it took quite a while to get to our rooms and get settled. Also I understand the need for fire doors but they really need to be easier to open when you have luggage. The room - the size of the room itself was fine, decently sized actually, with a hall area that held the closet and led to the bathroom. The room had two small beds (one twin and one double) - I move a lot in my sleep but I let my aunt take the larger bed - needless to say I woke up every time I moved afraid I would fall out of the bed. Also the room was STIFLING. I tried opening the windows or the door to the balcony and nothing would open - they all appeared locked shut (thankfully a staff member fixed that for us later but not before we felt very overheated). Although - after sleeping with the window open all night I woke up around 4am absolutely freezing 😅. There was not really anywhere to lay out my suitcase (avoid a clamshell here if you can) - no folding stand, shelf etc., so I spread mine out on the floor, but my aunt managed her smaller one in the closet space as there was a small shelf there. There was no fridge, no safe, but the closet space was decent. Bathroom - falling apart 😬 the towel warmer did not work and appeared to be missing pieces. Shower was just OK. I did appreciate the larger sized towels though. The bar/restaurant…. 😔 This is where our biggest issue lay. We joined our tour friends who had been seated in the bar for supper - they had told the staff we had planned to order food yet weren’t given any menus and no one was taking any orders until we had requested 2-3 times for them to do so and they did so quite begrudgingly. In fact the bar staff were quite flippant and treated us pretty poorly despite us being nothing but nice to them! It was also confusing as I don’t drink beer and they don’t do any cocktails (despite having lots of liquor available) so I had to try to figure out what to order as they offered no suggestions. I finally decided on getting a cider but they had 3 flavours. I said “surprise me” as I wanted to try something new. Next thing I knew she had opened two bottles and put them before me and told me to tap my card. I didn’t want 2 drinks but she had already opened them so I just paid and gave the second one to a friend. By the time we got our food orders in the kitchen was nearly ready to close, not our fault, just no one would take our orders - I had ordered a chicken Caesar salad - something simple as my stomach was feeling a bit off and I wasn’t super hungry. The streaky bacon (our standard bacon here in Canada) was severely undercooked but with the kitchen closed I just chose not to eat it rather than complain and upset the staff more (picture added). As we were leaving and getting ready to pay for our food I heard one of the bar staff grumble something about “stupid Americans”… I now wonder if they were treating us poorly due to thinking we were American - we are Canadian, very much NOT Americans. When I paid I handed over some Euros as a tip and said “Thanks for putting up with us Canadians, we’ve loved our trip to Ireland so far!” with a big smile on my face - the server immediately looked flustered, took the tip and disappeared behind the bar. She knew I had heard her, knew she was wrong, and then chose to hide instead of apologize. Needless to say our stay here was severely dampened by that, but we didn’t let it completely ruin our night! We still enjoyed our drinks, watched the FIFA game on the TV and then all parted ways for the evening. Checking out was easy - except we couldn’t figure out how to get back to the elevator (the fire doors got confusing) so we dragged our suitcases down the first set of stairs we could find which thankfully led right into the lobby and was thankfully only down one flight! Also one last thing to note, this hotel is a good drive from central Killarney - if you’re looking to actually see Killarney I’d suggest staying closer to town.