TF Royal Hotel & Theatre — Hotel in County Mayo

Myself & my wife, being the parents of a 2 & 3-year-old, don't get away together (alone) very much. In fact, it had been over 2 years since we had any time alone whatsoever. We have a new baby coming in September, and it will likely be another 2 years at least before we get away again. we both work long, hard hours at our jobs, so to get away for just the weekend was like all our Christmases come at once

We decided to take a weekend away, close enough to home, just to be ourselves again, rather than mammy & daddy. I started researching, and having looked at the pictures for the TF Royal, seemed like I was on to a winner. I mean, look at that picture with the bathtub, free-standing in the room - ya, more about that later.

So, I booked the Double Deluxe room. To be sure, I emailed the hotel to enquire what the room would be like. The receptionist there, and I quote, stated "You are correct, Our Deluxe Double Room has the bathtub in the room! The Bathtub is located in the Room, on your left."

So we get to the hotel. I have a pile of treats ready for my wife, including a big bottle of bubble bath - all set for this class looking room. We check in, & the receptionist tells us just dial 0 if there are any problems.

Up the stairs to room 140. We walk in - there must be some mistake - this is a standard hotel room. No bath in the room. we check out the "Smart" tv - apparently, every tv in the hotel has NETFLIX, YOUTUBE & other smart features. Not this one. So, I dial 0 - phone doesn't work.

I walk down to reception and ask the girl, have we been given the correct room? It was confirmed to me the room we booked had the freestanding bath etc. She tells me that that room was given away to a couple on a wedding anniversary. "Given away"??? We weren't asked if this was ok. On to the TV issues. As you can see from the channel list in the room, there are meant to be multiple channels. we had the basic Saorview ones, about 5 channels. The girl sent a man up to look at the TV. He could do nothing with it. We asked about the smart feature (me knowing full well this was not a smart tv), and his reply was, well, did ye bring any devices with ye that ye could plug into it? NO - WE DIDNT. I always bring a hard drive or chromecast to hotels with me, but as it was promised that NETFLIX was on EVERY TV, I felt there was no need.

On to the room - the bathroom was a disgrace. Horrible, mouldy tiles everywhere. A tiny bath. Patches of dirt everywhere on the ceiling. The room itself was merely alright. There were light fittings loose in the ceiling, more patches of dirt that had been obviously painted over (in gloss white, making them very obvious), and bird poop on the blinds. Yup, bird poop. The room had no information about the hotel, no menu for the restaurant, nothing. The only piece of paper in the entire room was the channel list for the TV, the list that only actually had about 2 of the channels on the tv itself.

Breakfast in the morning, I found grand. However, my wife had to leave hers both mornings we were there. She noted that the fruit salad looked "old", the apples were browning and just looked off. On the 2nd day, she ordered a boxty breakfast, and she had to leave it, comparing it to eating a rubber mat. So she got a scone, this too had to be left, as it was at least 2 days old.

I cant offer any insight into the evening meal or even lunch. We opted to eat out elsewhere as we were damned if we were going to drop any more money into this business after what we experienced.

All in all, our idyllic weekend was ruined by these experiences. It was one thing after another in this place. Safe to say, we will never return here again. We felt lied to, & let down.

If I could, I would give my review score as 1.5 stars, with the .5 allocated for the staff being very nice. Other than that, there's nothing endearing about this...

An exceptionally well located hotel with fantastic staff and good food. Beware of room 126!

The Location: Is excellent, being minutes from both the centre of the old down and the newer part. There was a number of parking spaces out front and we had no issue acquiring one though this might be an issue during more busy periods. It is opposite the county hospital and convenient to various main roads and the bus stop.

Pets: We give massive bonus points for allowing us to bring our German Shepherd. I cannot express enough how happy that made us.

The Room: This is where the hotel let itself down. We stayed in room 126. While this was a mish-mash of décor from at least 3 separate decades, our main complaint was the very poor ventilation. While there is a window in the bathroom, it leads out on literally a black hole. There is nothing there which is a consequence of the hotel somewhat organically growing over the years with no provision made for such windows and ventilation needs. The bedroom window overlooks an rooftop alley with a high wall opposite and being perhaps only a metre away and allowing for very little air circulation in the room, even with the window fully open and curtain back. The alleyway was quite filthy and it would not have taken much effort to have swept it and given the wall a lick of paint. The room itself appeared to be sprayed with something and was stuffy so the lack of ventilation, especially at night made it hard to get a good night's sleep, despite the large bed. I do appreciate that there is a good chance we were not given the best room because we brought a pet and we were game for that. However, we were entitled to good night's sleep which we did not get.

The Staff: This is where the hotel really shone. We met about 10 separate individual staff members and all were extremely friendly, courteous and helpful to us. My highest praise to them and kudos to management for their recruitment practice.

The Breakfast: Consisted of both a simple buffet and an a la carte menu. The buffet was serviceable and the second morning I chose the crepes with bacon and maple syrup which were delicious. The coffee, which came in a cafetiere, was surprising good, good enough to drink it straight.

The Dinner: This was extra. The food was lovely - smoked salmon to start with and a quality cut of striploin steak. Bonus points for not just having non-alcoholic beer but non-alcoholic wine. That was a very nice and considerate touch for which my wife was grateful.

While we were less than pleased with the room, the fact that pets were welcome and the quality of staff helped take the edge off that. I'd kindly ask the TF hotel management to fix up that room (and probably 125 as well from the looks of it) or, more to the point, close them off entirely. With the dramatic lack of ventilation, they're simply not fit...

We recently stayed in TF Royal Hotel and were very disappointed. Booked weeks in advance, when we arrived we were given a key to our room which was less than half the size of the room we expected and paid for. It seemed to us both that it was a store room with a double bed in it. It felt extremely claustrophobic. We went to reception and expressed our disappointment with the receptionist who was very understanding. Another member of staff came to the room shortly afterwards and offered us a room across the hall. The room wasn’t much bigger but the bed was more comfortable. He said the manager would come to talk to us as we told him that the room didn’t match the photos shown on the website when we booked. We waited for about an hour and still no sign of a manager. We went out for an hour and told the receptionist and she said she would call the manager again. She said he was busy with a function so we said we would talk to him when we returned. When we came back, the manager was called again and he said he would be with us in 4 minutes and to wait in reception. After 10 minutes had passed, the manager came to us and introduced himself as Michael. He asked us what our complaint was and we explained, showed him the pictures of the room and told him the room we got was nothing like the pictures and that we paid €226 for what essentially was a box room. His explanation was that the pictures on booking.com were an example of a double room in their hotel. He said if they were to put up a picture of every room there would be hundreds of pictures on the website. His response was, at the very least, unprofessional, he didn’t give us any satisfaction at all. He was arrogant if not bordering on rude. He said we could cancel and said he didn’t mind if we put up a negative review. From listening to the manager we were under the impression that there were hundreds of rooms in the hotel but when we spoke to the receptionist the following morning there were only 12 open to the public! When asked about our stay, we were honest about our experience and stated our disappointment. She said she would note and report this. A week later and we have not heard...