This castle hotel claims to be a 4* hotel, but it is at best a 1* European, or 2* US rating.
The room assigned to us (the Silken Thomas Room) was a dump. It was closer to a dungeon than to a hotel room. There were no windows in the room (except for a skylight in the bathroom and a skylight in the bedroom, both of which had to be covered because of the significant draft. When we arrived (late in the evening), there was no heat in the room, and the bathroom skylight had been left open. But because the heat was on a timer, no heat was able to be gotten into the room since the timer had the heat off.
The lighting in the room was dismal. There was no light near the bathroom mirror, making shaving and putting on makeup a risky operation. The telephone was inoperable, when we tried to call the desk. There was no clock, or TV in the room, things typically provided in a 4 Star hotel. There were cobwebs on the ceiling, and the decorations were like out of a dungeon.
When my wife complained at the reception, there were no other rooms available that night, but we were given a suite the next night (Barnard Room). That was a bigger room, and had windows, but it was also in disrepair. There were holes in the wall, the security chain was missing, the ceilings in the bathroom and bedroom were water-stained and peeling. If that was their suite, I would rate that room no better than a 3 Star, US. (It did have a TV, a clock and a working telephone.)
Their website does not offer a star rating, but the pictures shown do not in any way represent the rooms that we were given. It is obvious that since the bank took over, due to bankruptcy, there has been nothing done to update or repair any of the rooms. They need to spend a few euros to update their facility to 20st century expectations.
However, if you want a real castle experience, with drafts, dreariness, dungeon-y atmosphere, this is the place for you.
Room Tip: go somewhere else, like Birr castle
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
30 November 2011
Dear Guest,
Thank you for your review, in response to this I would like to explain why you experienced what you did.
Unfortunately, as the Castle was not designed as a Hotel, we cannot help the lighting that is in each particular room, we are aware that this is an issue in the Silken Thomas Room and we generally would not use this room, however a the castle was fully booked on the night of your stay we had no choice but to. In Order to give our guests a complete castle experience, we boasted the fact that no appliances i.e. TV's were available in rooms, however we are currently in the process of installing a TV in each of our guest rooms. I apologies sincerely about your telephone not working, I do sympathise with this as I know how far away from reception your room was and I would also like to apologies about the heating situation, as the system in not state of the art, unfortunately we cannot control each room individually however we do offer our guests the availability of extra blankets and/or electric heaters. These are available upon request.
The issues that you noted in the Bernard suite are currently being worked on also, our painting team are working their way through the castle rooms.
we do note that there is a trend within your comments and we truly thank you for them and we would like to bring to your attention that since the castle has received a new management team we have been freely able to look at these issues and can confirm to you that refurbishments are ongoing and TV's are now a standard.
We also pride ourselves on our staffs warmth and friendliness and our management teams professionalism, coupled with our very high dining standards and I do hope that you experienced this during your visit.
Warmest Regards
Cavan Dunne
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of TripAdvisor LLC
