Hell Would Be A Nicer Place (Britannia Hotels in general)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Britannia Hotels in general
Date:	27/08/02 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: they wish

Disadvantages: the hotel building and the staff

My experience of Britannia hotels has always been so appalling that, given the choice, I would never stay in one. As always happens, though, it wasn’t up to me, and so for 8 days at the start of June I was holed up in the Stockport Britannia for a lovely little training course on how to make sure I wouldn’t lose any of my kids or, more importantly, annoy their parents this summer.

The hotel is on Dialstone Lane in the Offerton area of the town. A taxi from Stockport station costs about £5, and although there’s a bus stop outside, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have luggage. The hotel itself was what I have come to expect from the chain. The reception area was old fashioned (70s) and staffed by receptionists who wouldn’t even have been born then but who were so rude it didn’t matter. The lounge area is the biggest insult to interior design you’ll ever see and also houses an expensive bar (£2 for a coke compared to 50p in Manchester city centre) and a wide screen TV which pleased most of the group since the World Cup had just started when we stayed.

The bedrooms are spread out over 3 floors in two wings. If you’re thinking of using the lifts, don’t. If you’re thinking of taking the stairs, do so carefully. The former are so old they have the separate inside cagey door thing I’ve rarely seen outside films, and the latter are narrow, creaky and all together unsafe looking. Technically the hotel would be suitable for disabled guests, but I for one wouldn’t want to trail those bumpy corridors in a wheel chair, or travel alone in one of their precarious lifts.

The rooms themselves have interesting decoration (for “interesting” read “tacky”) and are verging on the small side. We had 2 beds (luckily – a lot of the group had been put into double rooms to share with random people they’d never met before), a bedside table (just the one), a suitc
ase stand and a trouser press (conveniently hidden in what appeared to be a wardrobe, but wasn’t – our clothes stayed in our bags since there were also only 2 drawers). We had a kettle and two cups, plus a limited supply of tea and coffee, which weren’t re-filled. High on the wall was a TV offering Channels 1 – 5, Sky Sports, Sky News and CNN I think. The bathroom was just that - a room with a bath (plus dodgy shower attachment), loo, basin and about 30 cm of floorspace to manoeuvre between them. Again, although we had soap and their shower gel / shampoo sachets (which are really runny, really blue and really good at leaving the dirt still on you) these were only re-filled once during our stay.

While maids came into the rooms daily, their duties seemed to include little more than making the beds and shutting the windows (which we opened again immediately we returned because of the fact the, like the rest of the hotel, the rooms were boiling). They didn’t clean and they didn’t always change the towels. Now it’s more than likely this is because of the size of our group, the frequency JMC/18-30s use the hotel, and the fact that they were almost certainly not paying full rates, but I can’t be certain. Hmmmm, had they known they were housing a little opinion writer for a week, they might have upped their service (evil cackle, as I now get to tell you all how bad they are. Do hope they have net access…….)

We were on full board which was not good. Breakfasts were identical daily unless, as they frequently did, they ran out of items, say orange juice, butter, bread. This then meant a smaller selection as they didn’t provide alternatives. The choice, on a good day, included:

Orange, apple, grapefruit and tomato juice

A cold buffet – croissants, fruit, cereal and yoghurts

A hot buffet – traditional English breakfast, of which all I ate was something whi
ch could have been warm bread, fried bread or toast depending on which slice you got

Tea and coffee were available but you had to ask very nicely and not be in a hurry.

You could order breakfast to your room but only a continental selection. The rest of the room service menu, which I didn’t try, included sandwiches, salads and an awful lot of alcohol to make up, I imagine, for the lack of minibars.

Lunch for us was a selection of buffets which were limited, badly cooked and pretty disgusting. Dinner was a carvery. 6 nights out of 8. Overboard? Them? It’s an on-going thing too, because the first words from everyone we met out in resort were “Just been in Stockport? Enjoyed the roast dinners?” The best food was on our two sponsored evenings when, although the hotel cooked, the menu was provided by the company. And even then, they managed to mess up the garlic bread….

The hotel advertises itself as a suitable venue for conferences, and while it was ok, I’ve been to better. The training rooms are small and stuffy, and they seemed to enjoy providing broken OHPs, projectors, TVs, tables, chairs and so on. They did like their iced water though, and we had our jugs refilled every time there was a break. The breaks meant tea, coffee and cordials for the rest of the reps, and a plate of biscuits for me since I drink none of the above. While I’m on the subject, serving the same biscuits twice a day for a week is irritating when you think of all the wondrous crunchy things out there, and the fact that we were all leaving behind the British biscuit trade for months on end.

In our free time (about an hour a day except on football days when we got most of each England match off training) we looked at the (small) swimming pool and (very hotel) gym. These cost £2.50 for 24 hours or £5 for 4 days (I think) but I didn’t opt for these, choosing instead to lie on my bed reading the free newspape
rs (the only ones offered were the Independent and some red top I’ve forgotten, but better than nothing).

In the vicinity of the hotel were shops (newsagents, Spar, florist, pharmacy) and the odd pub, take away and proper restaurant. It’s quite a way into the centre of Stockport but buses do head that way.

I imagine that most people using the hotel would be doing so on business, or holding a reception of some kind there. It’s not the type of place you’d go for a week’s holiday or even a short break, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you were given the choice. I’m sure there are better hotels in the area, and if not the certainly in the city. When you consider that hotels are places to stay, sleep and eat for any number of days, one which provides incompetent staff, uncomfortable bedrooms and sub-standard food can have few redeeming qualities.

Summary: