The Portland Guesthouse — Hotel in Cheltenham

The guesthouse is run by a charity, teaching vulnerable and disabled adults the business of hospitality. The house is beautiful with Regency Features and our bedroom was nicely decorated with an en-suite and door out to a small terrace with a garden table and chairs. The staff were helpful and very pleasant.||There are so many things that could be tweaked very slightly to make this a great place to stay. Walking up to the front door of the house, there are lots of weeds and dead flowers in pots. The stunning red door has a handwritten note giving a mobile number for contact and this note is stuck to the door with sellotape or similar. It wouldn’t take a lot to make this first impression better. Inside the house, the commercial kitchen door is wedged open so you can see everything that a door is there to hide. Again, down in the basement where our room was, there were baskets of linen and linen strewn across the floor. As with the kitchen, guests do not need to see behind the scenes of the laundry. The terrace outside our room needs some love and care and a lick of paint to transform it into a very pretty little feature. |When it came to breakfast, there was one poor lad doing everything. He seemed to be the only member of staff in. I am sure he was doing his best, however one lady waited for at least 45 minutes for her scrambled eggs. It turned out that this lad had to go out mid breakfast service and buy more eggs to do that. When it came to our order, he said he had run out of mushrooms and the couple that came down after us were told he had run out of bacon. Who is there teaching him to plan what he needs to buy in? I am not blaming this on the lad left here on his own to cope. There does not seem to be anyone here responsible for running the guesthouse and teaching these vulnerable adults the skills and standards they should be striving for in hospitality. This guesthouse could be so wonderful with just a little...

So sad to write this review, as I wanted to like this place. The young man who greeted me when I arrived was a lovely young man, but did not seem to know what to do. I had to call out to him as there is no entry desk.|The door to our room did not close properly and so had to be pushed, pulled and slammed. As we heard during the night when we were trying to sleep on our ancient mattress, the other rooms had the same problem. In the bathroom, I knocked my elbow on the sink which over-hung the toilet. The room could have been cleaner.|The next day, we went down to check out and have breakfast. The breakfast menu looked lovely and was one of the things that drew us to the B&B in the first place - we had seen it in the reviews and description. We had to call out again to get someone's attention and were told to put our keys in a basket to check out. We went for breakfast. The food was microwaved and poor. I asked for soya / oat / any non-dairy and was shown a carton of lactose-free dairy milk, I explained I could not eat this, and so the lady came back 30 seconds later with what seemed to be the same milk in a jug - so I could not see the label? - and explained it was soya milk; it was not. We were eventually brought my breakfast of poor micro-waved food, and was told that the bread was sourdough bread as advertised; it was not, it was very cheap white sliced bread. I have had better breakfasts in poor motorway service stations.|I have to be honest, I could lived with the slightly poor conditions, but advertising something as one thing and it turning out to being something else seemed deceptive to me. It broke my trust with the guesthouse. The owner of the guesthouse need to manage it properly, as it is not...

The Portland Guesthouse was not the usual kind of place that we would have chosen to stay, but the location was perfect for a quick stop over. Having said that we will definatley be staying here again. The Georgian house is part of Gloucestershire charity Aim up to provide a range of care and support services to adults with disabilities, challenging needs and health conditions. There aim to provide training in all areas of the hospitality industry to people who would otherwise be unemployed. During this training they also work towards credited exams and receive certification. They take on students and staff from all backgrounds, learning and developing their skills as they go. The guest house is in a perfect location for anyone visiting the city for the many shows and festivals held there during the year. Right in the city with an NCP car park across the street or permit parking changed at just £5 a night if you book direct. I can't recommend this place enough. The rooms were pleasantly decorated in keeping with the appearance and period of the house, the breakfast was superb and the on site project managers were friendly and helpful. If your in the area give it a chance. This project is deffinatly something I would be invested in if it was...