Bracken Hide Hotel — Hotel in Skye

I was torn giving it either 3 or 4 stars, but the place has four stars but guess it should rather get three, so therefore I am going to rate it with 3 stars. Guess the experts who were giving it a four-star hotel rating were looking a bit too much at the Skye while walking around ;-). Jokes aside, overall, we had a very good stay at Brackenhide. It is very new, only opened in April and they were probably overrun with bookings in the main season. Was a bit surprised though when looking at the google ratings and ending up with 3.9 which is not something you want to see in the beginning of an operation. The devil lies in the details and working in the hospitality industry myself, I could write book on what they could improve here.

First, there is no sense of ownership here. Where is the GM or manager, we never saw somebody greeting people or welcoming them to this new place. For me a must if you want to establish a relationship with guests and build a reputation. Being this person, you would instantly see small things to improve like the following:

Rather big stickers on the chairs on the terrace saying, “Made in China”. Things laying around like plastic, broken solar lamps, pet bottles etc. I know the grounds are very new but cleaning up could help, especially in an unfinished state. Staff very kind but apologizing for being understaffed. First thing you see when coming to the entrance is the kitchen windows where you see detergents and other stuff. This could be cleaned up or moved elsewhere. Same for the reception window showing all kind of folders. Reception looks unfinished. Rather loud radio playing during breakfast, ambient music would be much better. During breakfast OJ packaging lying around the Mezzanine Lounge. In general, it seems staff does not have enough space to store equipment. Probably a design issue. Coffee is rather bad filter coffee even though there is a big machine. When we asked for a Cappuccino, the answer was, it is not done during breakfast.

Guess the breakfast needs a section of its own. Think this was mentioned before on Google. It is not worthy of a four-star place. The continental breakfast is very basic. Bread to toast presented in the plastic bags it was bought in, other bread is also not so appetizing since probably de-frosted and quickly baked. OJ cheapest there is. Cereals that fell out of the containers look messy since the surface is not being cleaned regularly. All in all, a breakfast you find in an Ibis hotel standard. All the hot items you want to order are against a charge. All this for a price of GBP 250.—per night. If this breakfast option would be temporary and you doing an opening price in your first season of 180.—, it could be acceptable but not for 250.--. As a comparison, the Viewfield Guesthouse costs 190.—and has a full Scottish breakfast or other fish options included in the rate, which I agree is also not cheap but these are the prices you pay during high season on Skye and guess one expects a good overall experience for that.

Again, to mention the huts were very nice and we enjoyed it a lot. Also, staff was very friendly and the chefs for dinner were doing a very good job....

Nice views from the cabin, there's free roaming sheep for outdoor entertainment and the bed's fairly good, but the positives end there. The hotel is a construction site, the entrance to the premises is a just a big heap of sand. Check in and check out times are inflexible. The cabins look nice at first glance, but are impractical due to there not being enough storage possibilities. The bathroom in particular is an absolute designing failure. The sink (a colossal, cylindrical object) blocks the entrance to the shower. The shower door doesn't shut properly. The shower drain cannot cope with the flow of water, so you basically inundate the bathroom every time you take a shower. Then afterwards: where do you hang your wet towels to dry? The one hook on the bathroom door certainly cannot support all of them? There's a rail to hang a small towel on, but it is mounted just above the toilet paper and you don't want to get that wet, do you? Speaking of toilet paper: the spare rolls are found on top of the toilet brush, as there's no other place to store them. And the single rack to put your toilet bags on is simply too small. On to the entertainment section of the cabin. The reception "forgot" to tell us the WiFi box was stolen from our cabin; they were still waiting for a replacement. So no internet in the cabin, and thus no TV or streaming, because that works only through an internet connection. They offered us some compensatory drinks in the bar, but that doesn't make up for anything, really. After a day and a half, we got a spare WiFi box from an unoccupied cabin. Alas, the connection was so abominable that streaming was only possible in snippets of three seconds of sound and image. Then there's the breakfast rip-off. It's included in the price, but it's just a minimal continental breakfast. The buffet is so small, it all fits on one table. It consists of minuscule pastries (croissants and pains au chocolat) that were dry, as if they were more than a day old, some hard rolls, toast slices that weren't even taken out of the packaging, a small selection of cheeses, a smaller selection of meats (salami and smoked ham), fruit in juice that came obviously from tins, pre-packaged muesli, yoghurt in individual pots and fruit juice from concentrate. Hot drinks come in two varieties: coffee or tea. One woman dared to ask for a cappuccino, but "that option [was] not offered". There was no fresh fruit on offer and if you wanted anything cooked, it would cost extra (the cheapest meal was two slices of bacon and a fried egg for £8,50). Also, the buffet was not stocked up automatically, you had to ask for everything and anything: butter, plates, bread. It's not that there's not enough staff walking around the premises. There's plenty of them and they are all friendly, but they don't have a clue what they're doing. Either they're badly managed or not managed at all. There are no protocols in place (at check in we had to ask when and where breakfast would be served, you'd expect this kind of information is drilled into staff members). Our three night stay was disappointing to say the least. We paid £276 a night, but we did not leave feeling it was...

My girlfriend and I stayed 2 nights from the 19-21 August at Room 25. When I booked this hotel on its website I had high expectations as the photos looked amazing and the descriptions give you an expectation of it being a 4 star hotel... this couldn't be farther away from the truth.... I can only describe this hotel as a complete SCAM. I will go into detail below.

We arrived tired from a long car trip at 6:30PM and went to unpack. The rooms are very small with little to no space to set 2 carry-on luggages. The shower was terrible with cold water. Tried to inform the reception but there are no phones in the room. Went to the lobby at around 8PM to try to have dinner still shivering from the cold shower but the restaurant was full and I was informed that I should have made a reservation (this had not been pointed out during check-in to us). We were left completely unattended and were not offered even a snack at the bar as an alternative. We tried to go to the town center (which can only be reasonably reached if you have a car) to find somewhere to eat, but all restaurants were either closed already or fully booked. Our last option was to go to a nearby supermarket and buy the last sandwiches available. What a TERRIBLE start to what was supposed to be an amazing stay at this fantastic island.

Thankfully, the next morning we had a good breakfast at the hotel and spoke to reception about the lack of any hot water in the room bathroom. This seems to be a very common complaint by what we read from other reviews, so if this is an ongoing problem I can only reach the conclusion that the hotel owners/employees throttle down the water heater to save on energy. Apparently, this was problem was easily solved at our 2nd night as now the water was magically scolding hot!

When we arrived from a long day of hiking at the end of the day we were negatively surprised that our room was still in the exact same condition as the way we left it in the morning. No turnaround, bed and bathroom a mess, garbage still in the room, etc... Disgraceful.

Our room had several other mishaps such as burnt lights, TV that didn't have even open air TV channels working, missing door handles on the closet, spider webs everywhere, wifi very slow and inconsistent, etc... Things that should have been easily noticed and fixed by the employees... Embarrassing!

I tried to find and speak with the hotel manager but he is nowhere to be found. Asked the reception to put me in contact with him to discuss these so many issues but they said that they wouldn't (or couldn't) do so!

These so many problems are bad enough for any hotel, but in this case it was even worse given that I was charged 385 pounds per night! This is ridiculous and absurd. This hotel scams and rips off guests.

This hotel and its owner/employees really have to get their act together. I will not return ever again and would recommend the same to other future guests thinking of going there. There are many other options of hotels throughout the island. Staying close to Portree is irrelevant as the town is tiny and has little to offer to people...