It's like someone ticked off all the boxes for what should be in a modern comfort hotel, without thinking through any of the basic things required to make guests comfortable. The room is laid out like a funky minimalist loft, but the furniture is rickety and cheap (like Ikea, but worse--the desk wasn't even useable). There is a modern wet room for the bathroom and shower, but no shelves or counter space to put your towels on so they don't get wet (not even a toilet lid--i had to hang mine on the sink). None of the basic hotel amenities are offered: no water bottles, no wash rags, not even a tissue box (really irritating having to run into the wet bathroom for toilet paper every time I needed to wipe my nose). The entire place reminds me of a middle-aged divorced man's apartment, and I expect better for €103 euro a night. This is the most expensive place I've stayed on my trip, and also the worst.
Moreover, the service is terrible. The first time the room was cleaned, the housekeeper left the skylight window open, and my friend's bed and clothes got rained on. The desk person replaced the bedding, but never brought in a replacement rug or bed sash, leaving the room even more bare than it was before.
On the third night, there was cigarette smoke wafting into our room from the hallway. When we called the front desk to complain (and then the bar, because no one was at the desk), the man explained that there is a designated smoking area inside the hotel on our floor, and that there was nothing he could do. It turns out the smoking area was on an outside veranda one floor below ours (so definitely not the source of the smoke), but no one had even come to investigate our complaint, much less try to mitigate it in any way. When we complained about it the next morning, there were two women at the front desk. One rolled her eyes and walked away, and the other offered us a 10% discount off our bill, saying she couldn't do more, because she wasn't the manager (I think the manager was the one who rolled her eyes and left).
We had paid for breakfast to be included with our stay, and it was underwhelming at best. At worst, it is the worst service I've had since arriving in the republic of Ireland. The cereal selection is minimal, and the quality of the breakfast food is poor. The milk for tea is left on the table with no lid covering it, so most of the pitchers have hair and other things floating in them. And if you're traveling with a group of only women (as I was), be prepared to wait for all of the men in the dining room (including the ones who came in after you) to be served their tea and breakfast order before anyone even asks for your breakfast order, or even brings your toast. That was my experience for two mornings, anyway (the last morning I was fortunate enough for no one else to come in behind me). Do not excuse this as a cultural thing. First of all, this didn't happen anywhere else we went. Second of all, we are not guests at someone's house, where the host may decide who is served first. We are at a place of business, where everyone's money is the same. And this is NOT OKAY. Not at all.
The hotel's website and the front desk person we spoke to as we were checking out described the Coach House as "quaint". I do not believe they know what that word means. Quaint means "attractively unusual or old fashioned". It does not mean sacrificing comfort and basic amenities in a faux-modern hotel with poor service. Also, don't be fooled by the pictures of the hotel lobby on the website--those are actually pictures of the Basilico restaurant next door. The hotel itself doesn't have a lobby, just an oversize desk crammed into the little cubby of space at the bottom of the stairs. The Basilico, on the other hand, is actually pretty nice. It's too bad they are affiliated with such an awful hotel. read more
