Kennebunk Gallery Motel & Cottages — Hotel in Kennebunk

We love it here! We came first in 2018 and this year we stayed in Cabin 1 and it seems like they updated the cabin. We also liked one of the beds (one was hard, one was soft-we prefer soft). We arrived later than we thought we would the first night and the owners made sure we had access to the key. It is what you would expect from Maine; a cute, but outdated and rustic cabin. It’s not a chain, and if you’re expecting a chain hotel type experience you’ll be disappointed. If you want a laid back, comfortable experience this is the place. We also like there’s ash trays and chairs outside. ||Pros:|Nice atmosphere|Outside space|Lots of room|Hot showers|Price point|“Maine experience”|Kitchenette in cabins|Heat works well|Generally quiet and calm|Good location ||Cons:|It’s outdated (which could be a pro because I think it’s part of the experience)||Our next door neighbor left both mornings around 5:30am and slammed things for 20 minutes. I counted Monday morning and they opened and closed their car doors 17 times. I have no idea what they were doing, but it woke us up both mornings because the walls are thin. On Sunday morning it sounded and felt like they hit our cabin with their car because there was a Big Bang and our whole cabin shook violently. I don’t know if they did-but it was frustrating because we got in so late. That’s not the owners fault, just to be aware you can hear and feel your neighbors. ||Others noted the shower was dirty, but ours was not. The carpet and loveseat do kind of need to be replaced, but that’s with most motel like places. Also, it’s an old cabin on cinder blocks, there are naturally going to be soft spots in the floor and it’ll shake when big things go by. The blinds do let in a lot of light in the morning, but our neighbors woke us anyway so it didn’t bother me. ||Anyway, we love this place. I suspect the negative reviews are from people who are used to the bigger mid-level chains. We love to visit those type of hotels other places, but we want a totally different experience when we come to Maine. We stayed at a different place in Old Orchard Beach last year at a much higher price and regretted it (honestly it was gross, uncomfortable, and super small) we would have much rather been here. It’s only 20-25 minutes from Old Orchard Beach, so we made a half day trip up there after lunch. Also, food options are better in Kennebunk than OOB in...

We've stayed here in 2010 and 2013, in a total of 3 different cottages. Kennebunk Gallery has worked out well for us because it's affordable and has space and kitchen facilities that allow us to have a family vacation where we cook our own food and have a little room to spread out. It's an affordable option with a nice outdoor pool, some useful conveniences that go with the cottages (clotheslines, charcoal grills), and a fairly quiet location removed from the traffic and crowding you'll find further south along Route 1. For our purposes, the location was great: convenient to area attractions but not hectic. You can get on the Shoreline Explorer trolley just a few hundred feet north of here at the Port Inn, with transportation to Kennebunk and Wells Beach and connections to Ogunquit and points north and south.

The staff was helpful, and we found the place quite clean, so those were big pluses.

However, the maintenance and furnishings are on the shabby side. The furniture and pans are scraped up and hodgepodge. There are doors that don't lock or that don't close easily and drawers that have to be wrenched open. The air conditioning unit in one cottage we stayed in was missing a knob; the Internet connection was sometimes adequate and sometimes absolutely unresponsive (I would have been completely out of luck if I needed to log in to address a problem at work while staying here); the grill outside one unit had a badly undersized grate and is more or less unusable, etc.

If you're willing to put up with some shabbiness and inconvenience but want a comfortable, clean, relatively quiet, affordable place to stay, this is probably a good choice for you. If you want well-appointed or worry-free lodging,...

Please note, this is not the lower-end place that its rates would suggest. The owners have just decided to keep the place full, by keeping rates low. It is fairly large, with about a dozen nice cabins, and a smallish motel-type building (five rooms). Really nice property, nicely landscaped, etc. We stumbled on it, when trying to find a place for under $200 (in mid-summer). All southern Maine hotels and motels have doubled or tripled their rates this year, to take advantage of the strong interest in travel. This place has not. We paid about $125 for a two-queen room, in the motel building. Beds were decent, as was the rollaway cot. Good sized fridge and a nice TV. Good wifi. Curtains blocked sun quite well. Shower was pretty good. We had a nice porch. Parking was ten feet from our door. A really nice pool, with depths from 3 feet to 9 feet. We could supervise our kids on the playground fifty feet away, just by looking out the back window. AC worked good. This place was very quiet, with a good clientele. We could use the microwave in the office building, and they had coffee there. The location is good, about a quarter mile outside of Kennebunk downtown.Room was quite clean. A few minor quibbles: we usually avoid places that accept pets, but the rate for this place made us make an exception. The shower had a mind of its own at times. There was mold or mildew in the AC (but the owner/housekeeper cleaned it when asked...must be hard to keep this from happening when near the coast). But when you are saving $100 per night, and it’s a nice place overall, those can...