Bedford Swan Hotel

Stayed at the Bedford Swan hotel for one night as we were attending a wedding reception in the coach house at the hotel. The hotel is in a great location in the center of Bedford overlooking the river. Check in was super simple as I completed pre check in online and the reception had a self check in to find your booking and make the key card. We had a classic double bedroom which was very comfortable, the bed was great and we both slept very well. One thing to note was the tiling in the bathroom and venue toilets was amazing! Love the victorian style tiles! We did not visit the spa but will definitely return to try the spa and stay the night again. Definitely recommend this hotel as we enjoyed a very comfortable stay.

We booked a night here on the way north, partly to celebrate our 10th anniversary and also the mother in laws 75th birthday. The hotel is a beautiful building, complemented by a fantastic location next to the river. First impressions were good; the hotel is stylishly furnished and decorated and not what you’d expect from such a traditional building. Given it was our anniversary, we’d upgraded to a junior suite (122) and what a disappointment that turned out to be! The pictures in the room were all hanging at odd angles so I went to straighten them and then realised they probably hadn’t been dusted in months. There were crumbs in a cupboard, stains down the side of the bed, all manner of dust and accumulated dirt behind the sofa bed, stains on the chairs, broken socket and tap in the bathroom, windows were very dirty, partly used tea bag that had been put back in the wrapper and left for the next guest (us!), furniture hadn’t been vacuumed under for a long time so much so you could roll up the dust and make dust balls out of it! A bit miffed that despite us letting the hotel we were celebrating our anniversary there was no mention of it. We had a large family meal for my mother in laws birthday in Pen & Cobb restaurant downstairs which I’ve reviewed separately - it was fairly dire. Very cheap quality food. Breakfast was the same; poor quality juices, cheap bread, watery baked beans, scrambled eggs were tasteless and probably powdered, odd tasting black pudding. Credit where credit is due the sausages were out of this world! On the whole, it was a poor stay and we couldn’t wait to get away and continue our journey to Yorkshire. I emailed the hotel on the email address shown on the website to let them know our dissatisfaction and a week later I’ve had no reply or acknowledgment. The staff we encountered at the hotel were ok but nothing beyond just doing their job. It was hospitality at the very low end of the scale. Paying nearly £500 for the room and the family dinner, I would have expected something much, much better. Next time we’re in Bedford we’ll be staying and dining somewhere where I feel my money has been well spent.

We’ve been to this hotel a few times this was for our anniversary. We were looking forward to nostalgic reminiscing of past experiences. Unfortunately that was not the case. We went to the thermal spa which was tatty to say the least there were no cups to enjoy the freshwater facilities, so we had to leave and go back to our room to have a drink. This was a waste of our time and really spoiled our experience with the thermal spa. We came up to the room we had a suite which we could say is maybe marginally bigger than an actual basic room but a lot more expensive. The door was hanging off of the wardrobe. The TV was unable to be connected to our own Netflix prime or even our phones the terrestrial channels were difficult to manoeuvre and there were no digital channels available obviously the same problem occurred with the water as we are so far from the water source apparently when we spoke to staff about the TV they seemed abrupt uninterested and it was not resolved and we were told that that was not available for us to connect our phones the TV therefore making it impossible to stay in the room as we did not want to watch Saturday morning kitchen or some boring news channel for rest of the afternoon we won’t be coming back very disappointed we’re booked until Sunday which will stay till Sunday but this will be our last visit to this one