Very 'Alarming' Hotel (Barcelo Edinburgh Carlton Hotel (Edinburgh))

Member Name: allanamia

Product:	Barcelo Edinburgh Carlton Hotel (Edinburgh)
Date:	02/10/09 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great location, nice food

Disadvantages: Their stupid alarm system, dated rooms and their customer service skills

We booked into this hotel in May this year for a little break to Edinburgh. I wanted something near the castel and close to town so this Hotel seemed ideal, it's just round the corner from the royale mile. They catered for familes in large family rooms so this was the Hotel i chose. Was I wrong to choose this Hotel... errr yeah! Nightmare!

The Hotel itself looks grand, charming with a lovely reception. We were located in a room quite high up, the decor was dated. Thick long velvet curtains that were very old and smelly. The beds were not great but comfortable. Very dated television and generally the room was in need of a refurbishment. The hotel is a 4 star but in my views it's definitely at the low end scale of 4, bordering on a 3 star. It has 189 rooms and has a leisure club/health spa.

Anyway the fun began at 2 am in the morning of our first night, we were awoke buy the very noisy fire alarms. We had to trail down this old spiral stair case at the back of the Hotel and i had 3 children with me 2 of which were asleep. So i had to carry my 1 year old and my husband carried the 5 year old. Anyway once we got the all clear to go back into the Hotel, low and behold we were awoke an hour later by the fire alarm. So off we went trailing down all the stairs to the back of the Hotel. I was in my PJ's and there was heaps of nightclubbers passing by us laughing. God i wish i hole swallowed us up there and then.

The next night the same thing happened re the fire alarms, obviously they had some issues with this alarm but I wasn't getting up out of my bed with 3 children for another false alarm. It was a complete joke. We laugh about it now but it certainly wasn't funny at the time.

So overall we had a very unpleasant few nights at the Carlton, not relaxing at all!! Very stressful with 3 kids and those stairs as you can imagine.

It is so worth complaining though as I wrote them a letter explaining about our break and how unpleasant the whole ordeal was. We were given a free weekend break which i gave to my Mum and Dad as a treat. They loved it and were apparently in a 'posh' room compared to our dated one. HUH...

Summary: Not going back, will stick to the Jurys