Royal Hotel

I should have guessed when it was the only hotel in woolacombe not full on a bank holiday. My sister and beau arrived in their room to find it stinking of cigarette smoke. When mentioned, a cleaner sprayed furniture polish around for some time which, due to the engrained stench didn't help. The decor was obviously based on the Overlook hotel (in 'The Shining'), and everything was yellow tarnished. The ONLY good thing about the room was the view. "Shabby" doesn't quite cover it. The shower would only flow scalding water, making it almost impossible to have the briefest of showers. Worse was to come when we attempted to eat the evening meal. I am not fussy, but the food was bad. It is served in army style cooking tins, and is all completely aneamic and tasteless. The cooked breakfast I couldn't attempt, but when my sister saw the scrambled egg being POURED into a tin - even the lady serving it, grimaced. We had paid for dinner, bed and breakfast, but went and ate elsewhere. Genuinely appalling.

the food was wonderful and plenty of it and the dining staff were top class. pity about the rest of the place. rooms shabby and staff with attitude. wafer thin bedroom walls. expect to have to wait until gone 4pm to get into your room. a coaching hotel expect to have to move your car to let the coaches park! avoid this place if you can. if you do go pay the extra for a room with sea views but not on the ground floor .

Have just returned from stay at "The Royal". Very pleased with service . Staff very co-operative and friendly. True there is a lot of painting going on, but this can only be for the better. The Hotel is obviously undergoing a major change to improve things. All I can say is that it was very good value for the money and excellent situation. I would like to return as soon as possible. Brian Thorpe, Lincoln

Just stayed at the "Royal" seems to be lots of painting refurb ect going on, great value it's not the ritz but you get what you pay for reccomended for a good value short break.

I arrived for an overnight stay with 11 other guys on a golfing weekend. First impressions were disappointing as it was quite obvious from the exterior decor that the hotel was in a poor state and in need of reburbishment. This opinion did not alter on the inside. Staff at reception were friendly and courteous but a sense of inefficiency prevailed. The evening meal finished very early and as we had been held up at the golf course late, we were ushered into the dining hall without a chance to shower or clean up. The self service buffet reminded me very much of my military carear, indeed if the standard of meal we were given had been served up in a military canteen I am sure there would have been complaints. Breakfast on Sunday morning also finsihed quite early at 9am. If all you wanted after a days golf and a few beers was a bed for the night then the hotel could be considered adequate but please do not expect any more. The one redeeming feature was the magnicent view down the Woolacombe valley to the sea.

We were appauled at the shabby appearance of the entire hotel.The carpets were worn and grubby.The doors leading to the balcony didn't fit properly, the curtains were moving in the draft.The bedding was shabby. We chose this hotel because we thought for the price of £252 for Bed & Breakfast for three nights we would at least have a clean and decent hotel. I personally cannot comment on the breakfast,I had one slice of soggy toast, I really couldn't face eating anything else. My husband and I checked out before breakfast on our last morning.

One of the most scruffiest and dated hotels I have ever stayed in, tape to hold down riped carpets. Although it was farely clean and staff were friendly. I suppose if you pay cheap you get cheap

This was our fourth stay at the Royal Hotel which we now visit annually in February in order to enjoy the wonderful coastal walking. True, the corridors are very tatty (but the public areas are not) and hot water in the shower can sometimes be erratic but this is more than compensated for by the warm spacious room we had overlooking the bay of Woolacombe. The dining room is large and served by friendly staff, and the food, although not cordon bleu, is perfectly adequate and plentiful, with a good choice. There are no problems with queueing at this time of the year. The small swimming pool is great, especially if you venture in before breakfast when you have it to yourself! At just over £20 per night per person for dinner, bed and breakfast, (for a 4-night stay in February with a discount for being a loyal customer) this is surely the best kept secret! We have stayed in lots of Youth Hostels and although I would not wish to discredit them, this is far superior. We are not bothered by decor, and in short, we love it!

Yes the Royal Hotel was VERY shabby, holes in the carpets, curtains nearly falling down and such but you get what you pay for. We paid £57 per person for 2 nights with dinner, bed and breakfast. It was a bargain! The view from our balcony was fantastic, we had one facing the bay. My sisters balcony view wasn't quite as nice but still good, the bay was to the right.Rooms were clean and ours was a very good size. The food was served buffet style and on the second night there was a bit of a queue for it but they never ran out of anything while we were there. We also got into the restaurant quite early so we avoided most of the queuing. There were two coachloads of people staying on the second night so it was slightly noisier but still barely noticable. The pool was good fun, there was rarely many people in it. The hotel also had a gym which we did try out but weren't very impressed. There wasn't much to it. So if you want a reasonably priced holiday but aren't too fussed about decor then the Royal would be good for you.

I have just returned from a 5 day break on a DBB option and must warn people who have walking difficulties that this is not a very good place to stay. Based on the top of a very steep hill it posed a problem for me whereby I had to use the car to get up and down the hill, resulting sometimes in expensive car parking. The hotel is in need of some serious refurbishment and one waiter in particular could do with some customer service training. We arrived on the Sunday booking through the internet and the meal was really good, soup, roast dinner etc and dessert. All self service and plenty of it. Monday morning breakfast again no problem although the times of breakfast (8.30-9.30) and dinner (6.30-7.30) left you feeling a little rushed. The problems arose Monday night dinner when apparently 2 different coach parties arrived and dinner resulted in total mayhem. Certain main courses disappeared before others could be served and all in all the staff tried their best but could not cope. The following morning they split the coach parties up by 15 minutes but everyone, including my wife and I turned up at 8.30. One member of staff was rather rude and loud making alot of people feel uncomfortable, so much so that my wife approached this person requesting him to stop upsetting a large amount of people. To his credit he apologised profusely but the damage had been done. He was later given the night off by management to probably get over his obviously high stress level. From then on each meal became a lottery. If we turned up at the start of each meal we had to wait in the corridor like you used to do for school meals but were probably guaranteed what was on the menu. We decided, as recommended by management to stagger our mealtimes, arriving at 9am for breakfast and 7pm for dinner. Breakfast was not that much of a problem as there were plenty of bacon, sausage, etc. but dinner time was another story. Each night one or maybe two of the options on the menu had already been taken off the menu due to huge demand, leaving us one night with a ham salad when I was hoping to taste the lamb but that quickly went followed by the lemon sole, all in the space of 30 minutes! It became a situation whereby first come was first served, not something my wife and I am accustomed to in a hotel. True this is a 2 star hotel and the run down appearance of the place never bothered us, our room was clean, the shower produced hot water when you least expected it and cold water mostly but we fell in love with the view from our bedroom overlooking Wollacombe Bay and this compensated for any lack of reliable bathing facilities. This hotel has been taken over and is probably starting to refurbish but very slowly. Our patio doors really took some shutting (Room 322), my wife could hardly move them and I must admit it took me a lot of effort to open and close them and I do not reguard myself weak in the slightest! To the hotels defence maybe the taking of two coach parties on the same day is a rare occurence and maybe they can cope when the hotel is not full but BEWARE... if the hotel is full be prepared to fight for your dinner. We were not the only ones with minor grievances and I have never felt the need to complain or write a review before but as I use TripAdvisor on every hotel I visit (unfortunately there was no review for the Royal) had one like mine been there for perusal then I would not have booked and gone elsewhere.