Ramada Chester 4star AA certified apparently...

nikaso

Myself and my lovely lady decided to go on a quick city break this week and we picked Chester as its an old Roman city and we both like York so thought why not. Got on lastminute.com anyway and found that the Ramada Chester was doing 1 night for £64, not bad for a 4 star hotel, we were going to go with a Premier Inn or so anyway so we thought an extra £14 for 4 star luxury would be a bargain.

We got to the hotel on monday afternoon and checked in, all seemed well, the lobby was quite attractive and seemed to give the impression of a 4 star facility. We got into our room and this impression was swiftly quashed.

The room was very small, it was dingy and the fixtures were showing their age, the bathroom hosted mould on the ceiling and bits of wood missing from the side of the bath, the bedroom itself contained a TV that wasn't tuned to any channels very well and one of the bedside lights wasn't working.

I want to stress at this point that the staff at the hotel in the restaurant and bar etc. were very polite and professional, its simply the facilities that let them down. The photos of the hotel on the Ramada site show big bright modern rooms, the reality is I have stayed in more impressive Travelodge hotels (I have nothing against them when they only cost £20!).

I have sent a complaint email off to Ramada and will see what happens but I didn;t want anyone to have booked a nice romantic getaway and end up like we did, we thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Chester itself but if we had paid full whack for the visit I would have been very angry.

Justicia

There are a fair few that appear to share your experience...

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g186233-d244527-Reviews-Ramada_Chester_Hotel-Chester_Cheshire_England.html

nikaso

Just added my review on there, wish I had read that first!

Bamber19

Did you speak to the staff about the conditons and ask to be moved to a different room?

nikaso

Complained and received this email back :

.....Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding the Ramada Chester Hotel, which was passed to me for my personal attention as Customer Services Executive for Jarvis Hotels Ltd. We are currently investigating your comments with the hotels Operations Manager, Paula Williams, who would like the opportunity to respond directly to you shortly.

Your comments have been carefully noted and you have my assurance that direct action will be taken where necessary to remedy any shortfalls in our laid down standards.

In the interim, it is my hope that this experience has not permanently marred your opinion of us and that we may look forward to welcoming you back to a Ramada Hotel again very soon, where I am confident you will receive our usual quality of welcome, care, and hospitality........

We didn't complain at the time and we should have done, we were just wanting to enjoy the time we had and didn;t want the hassle of complaining etc but I agree we should have done.

nikaso

Just to update anyone interested,

Got a reply from the hotel saying basically tough, this is our standard room. They did apologise for the dirtiness and offered an upgrade to an executive room and a bottle of wine if we were to return. This is no use of course because we have no intention of returning and would require us to spend more money with Ramada.

Sigh....

dancingdoll

Lesson learned. I've stayed at some supposed top hotels before (Hilton, Ramada etc...) and a lot of them (especially older buildings) have mould in the bathroom and around windows. Quite horrible for asthma sufferers.

On the spot I've always complained, nicely, and staff are always accommodating and moved us to a different room.

mountainchrisriver

I stayed here free in an executive room using the (now defunct) Ramada "find a cheaper price and stay for free offer"... it was a really nice room and if I remember rightly the swimming pool etc. were great aswell... :beer: