Old Ship (I)

The location is as good as it gets and is stone throw from i360 and pier ! There was scaffolding all of the front of the building facing the beach so be advised that your view would be seriously hampered. The hotel does have a certain charm and is very old but the facilities are very poor. There is a sign in the bathroom that states the building is old and it may take some time for the hotel to water to reach you! Well I can say during our stay the hot water never reached us at best it was like warm…. And would fluctuate to cold and luke warm. Very bad! The rooms aren’t quiet you can hear people walking above you and people to sides of you. The room itself was spacious enough we had a king room but there was mould in the skirting boards and cracks along with cracks in the ceiling.

Where do I begin. One of the previous reviews said the Old Ship had sunk - i tend to agree. We booked through booking.com £362 for 2 nights (Turs and Fri) as we were attending a wedding. Location is perfect and there the good news ends. The whole front is covered in scaffolding so you cant see the hotel - we weren't advised that this level of building work / renovation was going on. When challenged they said it is on all sites they market on ... I checked again - this is what it says .. ......... Exciting updates are underway across our hotel as we refresh and enhance our spaces. We’re open as usual and look forward to welcoming you. We carried on regardless but as soon as we walked in it was very apparent that this hotel was just old and run down with any level of investment over years and years obviously ignored. They have a big sign by the lift saying how proud they were that the lift was still the original lift from the1920's so be patient ... that just echoed the lack of investment. We got to the room - despite an upgrade to a seafront room with scaffolding in front of it it was, like the rest of the place very tired. The floors creaked with every step, the musky yellow chair which had threadbare arms was on the wonk, the paintwork was dirty. great! Then we went into the bathroom and oh my god. The sink was stained (see pics) and the toilet seat was stained yellow and cracked (see pic) - it was gross. The room was absolutely baking and the ceiling mounted fan ....didnt work. Open the windows for a bit of air.. safety limits the amount you can open. There was a floor mounted fan which helped a bit. I went and got the Duty Manager to ask for a room exchange and he asked if he could see the room. He didn't get what I was saying about the bath. in his words it just limescale and that happens - clearly they don't sell Viakel down there. He did however get my point about the toilet seat and was himself mildly embarrassed and didn't offer any comment To his credit he apologised but then confirmed that we couldnt move rooms. It was too late to get anywhere else at this point so we just had to lump it. He did confirm he would knock 25% off the Thursday night stay and we would try and move rooms for the Friday. We woke up on the Friday and decided to get breakfast in the hotel as we had a wedding at lunchtime. Here we go again. You walk through loads of corridors with tape holding down carpets, sheets up against walls ...we finally found the breakfast room. massive room with 1 other couple in there, no staff. I shouted hello in the kitchen and someone came out. Quite bluntly she asked if we had paid to which I said I needed to - at which point the PDQ machine was held in front of me to pay £35.90. It is cheaper if you had booked the night before. We found a table and the theme tune from Fawlty Towers should have been playing. My partner is vegan - there was no vegan option other than a tomato that looked like it was made at the same time as the precious lift. There were 2 slices of bread from 2 trays, there were hard sausages, there were no pastries, no orange juice and I had to ask for mile to put in my tea. So for the sum of £35.90 I had a cup of tea and 2 rashers of bacon and my partner had one cup of coffee. Scandalous. When the chap came over and I explained my partner was vegan and there was nothing available he just acknowledged what I said, picked up the plates and moved on. I hope its not the case but the impression you get is everything is rationed or just not on offer and if they overcook from a volume point of view then they leave it out. So, having survived this test we moved back to the room to have a shower with the limescale and get ready for the wedding. Back to bathroomgate - it tells you it is an old building so it may take a while to draw the water so I turned the taps ..... cold water yes but no hot water despite hearing air blockages. I thought if I had left it a while it would come through ... 5mins ... nothing, 10 minutes - nothing. Now we started to panic - 90 minutes until we needed to leave. I called reception and they said they would send up maintenance. about 15 minutes later he arrived, duly looked at shower and his exact words were 'what the f***' ... Yes - our thoughts entirely. He said the workmen may have turned off the hot water, he would go and check and come back - we never saw him again. We then decided we would just have to have a cold hand wash which was far from ideal. The phone rang and it was the Duty Manager. Lovely lady, full of apologies and told us we could have the Friday night free of charge given our experience. nice offer but the whole experience was going from bad to worse. She did offer to help us find an alternative hotel but time wasnt on our side. We went to the wedding but the whole experience ofnot showering etc made us that that fed up it took the edge off it to the point where we decided we didn't want to stay there the Friday evening. I decided not to drink in the afternoon and we duly went back to the hotel about 6.00 and packed and go home. We went to reception and advised we would be checking out. We checked out and then the final straw was they gave me a £194 refund to my card ... and it was declined! .. they did successfully do it manually so all good in the end but the visit certainly didn't finish on a high.. It was without doubt the worst experience ever in a hotel. After the refund we still paid over £200 for one night in a boiling hot room, a very grim toilet seat, a filthy bath, no functional shower and a shocking breakfast... £50 would have been too much! Had I read the more recent reviews about how run down it is I wouldn't have booked. We only stayed because my brother and sister in law did as they had stayed there before. they too, however were amazed at how bad it had gone downhill. They too were complimentary about most of the staff. I genuinely feel sorry for most of the staff as they cant work miracles and they tried to overcome most of the hurdles as best they could, and respectfully too .. they deserve better from the investors who have neglected the place. At the very least people could be properly warned from the get go. And the last little bit of irony ... all of these google reviews are responded to and signed off by the General Manager Jason - standard copy and past responses for the bad ones, and then tailored ones for any good ones ... but just look at who it says the reviews are from at the top of the review .. the one and only Manuel. All I will say is make read the reviews and make your own mind up. Meanwhile. I look forward to getting my standard cut and paste response from Manuel :-)

The car park is closed. The restaurant is closed. The bar is closed. Half the hotel is closed. Workmen starting at 7.30. This is not a few tweaks to upgrade the rooms they are ripping the place up and not warning the guests booking in of the extent of the reduced service. I would go elsewhere until they are finished.