We stayed at The Everglades Hotel (one of the Hastings chain of hotels) in April, apparently a 4 star, but I’m not sure how this rating is awarded – while the staff are excellent, and the public areas are schmick and even a little plush, the rooms need some attention to raise the standard. While our room was an executive room, it was crowded with furniture, it didn’t have a bar fridge (although, that may be a UK thing?) and there were no privacy curtains – only the heavy drapes, which meant that the houses opposite the car park could see right into the room in unless the drapes were closed. The shower head only had one setting for pressure – which was full on, and sometimes actually painful. The room was always cleaned well, though.
Am also not impressed that all of the Hastings hotels don’t have free wifi – subscribing to BT Open Zone for internet access (at £6 an hour) is inconvenient, archaic and sometimes quite unreliable. Tedious, really. I thought it might be a UK thing, but apparently there are other hotels that offer the complimentary access. Actually, even your 3 star B&B offers free wifi! This really is something that they need to address.
The location out of the town (had to drive in) wasn’t really a problem – it meant that we were away from the loud night noise, and parking was cheap when we did go in.
But the staff and public areas of the hotel were very good, so I can see how it has remained so high on the list of Derry hotels for so long.
