Barcelo Troon Marine Hotel

Extremely disappointed with this hotel. We were expecting a hotel experience similar to Crieff Hydro, Knock Castle, Cameron House or even that of a standard Hilton. However our experience was at best that of a travel inn (or b&b) with a small swimming pool and a health suite that was out of order with a constant sewerage smell. It was my first time at the Troon Marine Hotel and the Barcelo chain of hotels. I am sad to say I will not return to this hotel and would be very hesitant to re-visit any Barcelo hotels in the future.
The hotel however does have charm and upon arrival the ‘wow’ factor. This is unfortunately only on the surface and once you go beyond the exterior and past reception you begin to see the cracks and lack of investment within the establishment.
Starting with the basics, the one thing that any hotel of this standard should achieve is to make sure you get a good night’s sleep. We were both exhausted the next day. The sound proofing between the rooms and the hallway is terrible. Not only do you hear the details of other people’s conversations in other rooms, but on top of this, the hotel has not ensured to make sure doors do not bang within the hallway. Furthermore, our particular room had a room door that seemed to shake and make noise whenever anyone passed the door or opened a hall or bedroom door anywhere near our room. Other things that affected our sleep included issues with the heating system that meant our room was extremely hot upon arrival and that we had to keep the window wide open all night and turn down the radiator. There was also poor ventilation in the room toilet meaning that almost all smells drifted in the room. The ironic part with the room is that we were advised upon checkout that they had given us an upgrade to a premier room. If the upgraded premier room is that bad, I am glad we didn’t experience the standard room.
The health suite and swimming pool area is far too small and far too poor of quality for the size and star level of the hotel. The changing rooms were actually dirty with only a small changing area and one cubicle (in both the male and female changing areas) for changing into your bathing clothes. The showers were also poor with open and leaking pipes. When we where there, the steam room was broken and the sauna was unfortunately too small. In fact, we didn’t even get an opportunity to go into the sauna due to the size and it wasn’t even that busy. By far and away though, the biggest problem was the smell of the water. It smelt like they might have had a sewage problem. You don’t detect it initially however, after a small period in the water, you begin to smell it. It was certainly bad enough to cause your skin to smell of sewage. What was also very poor was the lack of action by the members of staff after we complained about it. Certainly, when we were there, I saw nothing done about it. As you can imagine, that was our first and last experience within the health suite.
Moving onto the dining experience, you would have hoped it would have been great. Personally, we didn’t have dinner as we felt that the food was overpriced however the cooked breakfast was lovely. The portion control was unfortunately ridiculous and it beggars belief that they feel it acceptable to give you half of a potato scone and to actually cut slices of bacon in half. Again, not what you would expect from a hotel of this star rating.
There was actually a lot of smaller issues that we also picked up on such as the poor ventilation in the bar area that meant the area smelt of food and the lack of action by the reception staff when we mentioned our poor night’s sleep.
I think at this point, you can probably tell that the hotel experience was not enjoyable for us and not somewhere we would actually recommend to anyone. It gives me no pleasure in saying this but as a result of our poor experiences at the hotel during Jan 2011 I would go as far to say (I have never said this or commented on a hotel on this way), I would strongly advise to avoid this hotel. I only hope that if you do choose to visit the hotel, that your experience is not similar to ours.