Pine Valley Hotel

Just finished a lovely week here at Pine Valley Hotel, staff very friendly and helpful, Mustafa and Maggie are brilliant, breakfast was lovely lots of choice. Rooms where cleaned daily, great atmosphere plenty of sunbeds will definitely return, Kevin and Marie from Reading

We recently stayed at this hotel. A beautiful location and handy for the strip. However, on arriving at the hotel, the first thing that greets you is a sign outside the main entrance on the pavement telling you that only food purchased on the premises may be consumed there. Fair enough, but it is not very welcoming! We decided to upgrade our twin rooms to two 2 bedroom units Mainly as my daughter was sharing with her 16-year-old son. We paid a daily supplement. We were shown the rooms before we committed to changing, but we didn’t really notice then how basic and dated they were having been up since 4 am. We were in an annexe off the main building which felt like a fire escape when you entered. There was no bedside table in the room with two single beds. No guest information booklet so we were unaware of the hotel facilities such as the Spa and food timings. The fridge had a curled up sign in it as a price list and another sign telling us you are not allowed to put your own stuff in the fridge or it will be removed, which is absurd. We did take one bottle of water out of the fridge, but this was never replenished. The rooms never felt like they had been properly cleaned. The shower certainly wasn’t cleaned every day and I don’t think the toilet was or the sink and mirror. There weren’t any cups for the bathroom let alone any tea making facilities. The wi fi was very poor. We also had some black sacks residing just inside the entrance to our block for several days and the cleaners sponge was permanently resting on the bannisters. All the coat hangers in the wardrobes were mixed ones that previous guests had obviously left behind. My daughter’s room was the same. She was level with the bar/restaurant area and experienced a lot of noise at night. Her room was just as basic as ours I would like to know how the daily charge is justified particularly as these rooms are meant to be 4 star.

We did findall the staff to be lovely and helpful and very approachable. I believe it is the management of the hotel that are at fault here. The hotel is B and B, food in the evening is offered, but it is unclear at what times this is. We were told by one of the staff that Mondays was roast dinner night so we decided to stay in and took our seats in the restaurant around 7 pm. Only to be told by the waiter that you have to pre-order the roasts. We have not been told this nor did i tell you on the sign advertising them. The last night we were there on the Saturday there should have been a barbecue as shown on the sign but we saw no evidence of that. Entertainment was hit and miss. One night there was a group that went on after 11:30 pm and then at midnight there was a raffle going. We know that because my daughter could hear it from her room. Far too late for loud music & noise. Yet the Saturday before we left there were some acrobats whose act lasted less than 10 minutes before they left and no sign of the raffle as advertised. We couldn’t understand this because there were people around and surely they are losing drinks revenue. I think the management need to look at the provision of food in the evenings and timings and make them clear to guests and also at the level of entertainment. With the town so close people will walk up there rather than sit somewhere with nothing going on. Late one afternoon there were three boys playing football right through the middle of the bar which I thought was inappropriate, but nobody corrected them. So these are my observations on this hotel. We would not return or recommend it. I am still awaiting managements’ comments on my observations sent by email. Here is. photo of the bin bags, the crumpled photos in the fridge and a strange plastic thing that was attached to the entrance hall floor for the duration of our stay. I will also add that I think we were in a part of the building that hadn’t been renovated but it certainly did not justify the cost which I think came to about £240 for eight nights. Looking at photos the rest of the hotel looks a lot nicer and we found a beautiful area on our last morning with tortoises roaming around. So it probably isn’t all bad but do not opt to upgrade to rooms that sleep 4 over on the forest side of the building.