BEST WESTERN THE LAIRGATE HOTE

Very easy check in and room comfortable and clean room a little dated but expected in older hotels

Hotel was ok for the price. Room was decorated ok but a little dated & bathroom were clean, bed comfortable & drinks making items great. The small Built-in wardrobe was horrible with rising damp and smelt very strongly of mould so closed the door quickly and did not use but the room was not mouldy and I only stayed for one night so was fine. No phone signal and WIFI wasn’t working at the time so would not be great if needing for work & not good for me arranging to meet friends. No bar or hospitality and did have lounge facilities but these were soulless and more waiting room than a nice place to sit. Staff on reception sometimes but informed mostly by messages. The whole place just felt a bit run down which is a shame as it could be a really nice hotel with a bit of investment as it’s in a great central location with huge potential.

I don't normally leave negative reviews, but I contacted Lairgate Hotel after my stay and asked them to respond to my experience. I had no reply so here goes: I stayed at the Lairgate hotel for two nights on 28-30 July 26 and again overnight 11-12 August 26. Overall I was happy with the quality and cleanliness of the rooms I stayed in - a little dated, but fine. The hotel has a great location too. However.... During my first stay I could not access my room (room 4) after breakfast but before I checked out. The reception was not staffed at 9-am but there was a phone number to ring. It took sometime to connect but when they did answer I was given the code to access the spare keycard and this worked okay. I dismissed this as a one off incident but during my second stay a couple of weeks later, my sister - who was staying in a separate room to me - was initially assigned room 19. Her keycard would not open the door at all - although the green light came on, so it appeared to be a problem with the door itself. The reception staff tried but hey could not open the door either, so they agreed to assign her to a different room. Initially they wanted to charge us extra for 'upgrading' from the room we could not access. However, that was resolved and my sister was then assigned to room 9 where the keycard worked fine throughout her stay. During this same stay, I was staying in room 2 and the keycard initially allowed me access when we checked in. However, when I returned to the hotel at 22.15, the card would not allow me to access the room. I again had to ring the number and it took a long time to get a reply. Eventually I was again given the access code to the spare keycard but this time it would not allow me access to the room either. I then had to wait for someone to come to the hotel to produce a new keycard for me, meaning that I was sitting in the corridor for about an hour in the late evening before I could access my room. If this problem had happened once, I would dismiss it, but as it has happened to me on three separate occasions in three different rooms I think there may be a problem that needs fixing - it is obviously unacceptable to leave guests stranded in a hotel corridor and even more unacceptable to not respond to a polite email sent privately pointing out the problem.