Ramada Jarvis Bristol

Just spent the weekend at the Ramada Jarvis Grange near Bristol. I can’t say I had a great time, but it wasn’t bad for the price.

So let’s start with the bad: the room and the customer service.

First off, we got plonked into The Mews, which isn’t part of the Hotel proper, but is stuck a few yards away. That’s not a huge problem unless it’s raining and cold, like it was this weekend.

The room itself: a bit cold, but reasonable quality, apart from the paper-thin walls. One of the light bulbs was broken:

Not a big problem, but the bath that wouldn’t drain – that was a problem.

We complained. They said they’d get a plumber. Great, we’ll be down in the spa the whole morning, we said. I say spa, but it’s actually a swimming pool a few metres across, a Jacuzzi, a treadmill, two bikes and a rowing machine. The changing rooms also don’t have showers, meaning you have to go to your room after you’ve finished working out or swimming. cf The problems of The Mews.

12.30pm I go back to the room and there’s a message on the tele saying we’ll have to change room. To cut a long story short, the receptionist says it’s now too late for us to change, but they’ve been looking for us all morning – by which she means left messages on the room’s tele and then gone to the room frequently to see if we’ve come back to look at it or not – and assumed we didn’t want to swap to a room with a bath that actually drains water. How odd.

The plumber’s not coming and since they can only use the designated plumber, they can’t call anyone else. The hotel’s fully booked so we can’t swap room, and even if we did, someone else would end up with our dodgy room.

Anyway, this goes on for much of the weekend. Fun, huh?

Food was all right: not brilliant, but still pretty good, even if they don’t know what a cappuccino’s supposed to be like. Mark-up on the wine was pretty high though (£20 for a £4.99 bottle of wine).

Last problem of the weekend was a total mess-up of the bill, with an extra £50 charged to the room for various reasons. The duty manager on the Sunday was a whole lot more helpful with that than the frankly rude Saturday manager, though.

For the price (£115 for two nights with £20 of food per person included), it wasn’t half bad. The spa could do with a few weights at least, as well as some showers. But there’s a few people there who sure don’t understand customer service and The Mews really isn’t a good place to stay in, I warn you.