The River Lee Hotel — Hotel in Cork

I paid over 1000 euro for a 3 night stay in a King Deluxe room I had booked at the end of July as I liked the look of the contemporary style rooms on the River Lee website. When I got there I was allocated a room that looked like it had been decorated a good 20 years ago facing a wall. I complained about the room and was moved to another room, same very dated styling but with a view of the river. There was bare patches all over the carpets when you got out of the lift, the carpet totally worn through where there was an ice machine. The bathroom was so unbelievably dated, really filthy grout and lots of white silicone. There was absolutely nothing Deluxe about the room at all. Why can’t hotels provide small jugs of fresh milk not plastic tubes or carton of milk, likewise toiletries, all individual bottles of shampoo etc. What a waste of plastic. When I challenged the duty manager ‘Jeanne’, who was very nice and did what she could, she explained the hotel only has a few rooms that look like the image on their website. They are doing the rest of the rooms up floor by floor. There was endless hammering, banging and machinery noises as they were working on a floor. This went on from 10-4 each day even on the Saturday when the Front Desk had told me there would be no work on a Saturday. Hardly conducive to a restful pleasant stay. Jeanne gave me some complimentary gins and a box of fudge, but this really does nothing to make you less outraged at how appalling dated and uncared for the bedrooms are. In the room where breakfast is taken, I watched staff clean the tables and swipe crumbs all over the floor. The velvet sofas were really stained, why such a lack of attention to detail? In all a very poor hotel. When I expressed irritation at the workman noise going on I was told that I had an email about it. Well that didn’t help, I booked the end of July, prepaid, and got an email the day before I arrived at the River Lee Hotel. A day notice of noise when you’re already in the country is unhelpful and as I said I was prepaid. The noise is directly above your head when you sit at the lobby bar where you’re meant to relax with a coffee or a drink, hardly enjoyable or relaxing. I’m livid that hotels are allowed to get away with this very standard of upkeep but charge premium prices. They never give you a discounted rate do they to reflect the noise etc...

At the time of writing Ireland has a problem with hotel prices. There are a lack of hotel rooms and the hotels take advantage, especially when events are on e.g Cork Jazz Festival, when we stayed here.

But even allowing for this, these guys are taking the piss. €319 for a hotel room that’s in the 3 star kind of range. My advice to most people would be, at that price, stay anyway. Though, if you’re paying in the 100-200 range, this is a perfectly adequate hotel.

Things to note if you are stuck here:

The Room The Shower knob in the toilet (bit dated looking) is not correctly calibrated. So you get hot you’ll have to turn it a 360deg rotation plus another bit So it looks like the dial is at 20 degrees temp but is actually at 60. The TV is poor, think 10 years old (see below pic), reception is poor and channels not so good. Bed was fine, but for some reason they gave us 2 Queen sized. We are used to a super king, so we ended up sleeping one in each. There’s a weird glass box at the end of each room. From it you can see across in to apartments on the other side, and down the row in to other glass boxes belonging to other guests. Not to my taste.

The Restaurant. It is Beautiful. Very nicely done up. The staff are also top notch. The food, bottom notch, it is very poor. We had the Salmon (tasteless) and fish and chips (think IKEA fish and chips), 2 drinks (nice) and it cost about €60 something, plus staff tip €70. Had better in IKEA the next day, €16 (without drinks)

Breakfast AVOID. You know that €319 for average room. Didn’t include breakfast. €15 extra, each, for ‘continental’ which is coffee, cereal and yogurt. Which stung. Probably was informed of this at booking, but booked in such desperation that and was charged so much, just assumed it would be included.

In short. Staff lovely. Room comfy. Hotel aesthetically pleasing. In good location. Food rubbish. But way too expensive for what your getting. You leave feeling ripped off. Though if you get hotel in 150 range you’ll...

This is the worse kind of hotel. On the surface it looks like a lovely place to stay but below that it is rotten.

1. The A/C doesn’t actually work until you call down and they make adjustments remotely to your unit. Then a few hours pass and it doesn’t work until you call again. This means you get about 3hrs of sleep at a time before waking up hot having to call.
2. The breakfast is the worst food I’ve ever eaten. It’s the first meal I’ve ever stood up and just left after the first bite. The avocado toast was hard as a rock, the avocado was off and tasted foul and got me sick after the first bite. The pancakes (a dish my 6 yo can cook) were not fluffy but this awful scratchy texture similar to the skin of a swordfish. The pancakes is the worst bite of food I’ve ever had. The coffee was foul too. Whoever runs the kitchen can’t have ever eaten a well prepared meal.
3. The room was dusty and the linens were so over washed without being replaced that they kicked off fabric particles in the air that caused my girlfriend to cough most of the time night. 4)The mattress must be original to the hotels opening. They are so lumpy and hard getting comfortable is impossible.
4. The service is slow or non responsive. I had to order additional towels several times because the shower leaks all over the bathroom floors. The first time the towels never came The second time I watched a full length movie and then an episode of young Sheldon and just as I fished the show the towels came.
5. I ordered the whiskey tasting. Told the bartender that we only drink whiskey and he proceeded to having us try a whiskey, a gin, and a vodka. Since we don’t drink Gin or Voka we didn’t drink them and the whole thing was a waste of money. Who ever gave this hotel 4 starts was drawn in by the facade of this being a good hotel but had they scratched the surface they would not have...