DoubleTree by Hilton Hotels in Bristol

We visited Bristol to celebrate my birthday weekend, so we booked a “deluxe” king size room for three nights. On arrival the hotel was very impressive with good car parking facilities and a very classy reception area. Check-in was friendly and efficient. There was just a slight confusion over the late check-out time – the website said 4pm, the receptionist thought it was 3pm. The reception is well attended and they were highly responsive when dealing with an issue with one of the lifts. There was a loud noise inside the lift one evening between floor 4 & 5 (a bit of a worrying sound of metal hitting on metal). It was great to see a lift engineer on-site bright and early the next morning attending to it. The bedroom was very spacious with lots of storage, a very comfortable super-king size bed and a clean bathroom. However, the main problem with the room was how dimly lit it was and the scruffy state of the furniture. It was difficult to see well enough in the room to put make-up on, which meant I had to wait for my partner to finish in the bathroom before I could use the better illuminated bathroom mirror. The dark wooden furniture was badly scuffed and warped; the chair was scruffy with peeling leatherette - surprisingly tired furniture for a Deluxe room. There was a lot of damage to the bathroom door (big dent in the wooden panel), scratches in the sink and broken robe hooks – not exactly deluxe fittings. Also the bathrobes were very small (approx size 14). When we came to pack up to leave we had to get a torch out to check in cupboards etc to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind – it was too dark to see inside the cupboards without a torch even though we had the curtains open and lights on. Unfortunately it was then that we saw just how extremely dusty the room was. The lampshades were very dusty. I doubt the area beneath the desk/dressing table had been vacuumed for months (lots of clumps of dust in the area where you put your feet). We were disturbed by just how much dust we had spent the last three nights sleeping with so, out of curiosity, we moved the bed to check underneath and discovered another very thick build up of dust and a roast potato from a previous guest’s dinner stuck to the carpet. There is an Eco option to not have housekeeping done each day which we welcomed at the time, as it meant we didn’t have to wonder when the cleaner would come in if we wanted to have a lie in. However, if I’d have seen the levels of dust in the room on arrival, then I would have asked for a cleaner to come in and give it all a good vacuuming. Apart from the disappointing dust and shabby furniture we enjoyed our stay because of the extremely comfy bed, excellent breakfast in the delightful Kiln restaurant and on-site car parking. It’s also a good location for visiting the city. But I’d need some reassurance that the housekeeping issues will be attended to before we contemplate a return visit.