Apex City of Bath Hotel

"There are some wonderful positives about this hotel and a few negatives that should be easily fixable but really let the place down. Firstly the positives. The location is great, on the edge of the city centre and easily walkable to all the main sights. There’s some great pubs, bars and restaurants in the area and the main shopping streets are a stones throw away. The staff are friendly, the rooms, while fairly worn, are a reasonable size and the pool and spa area is amazing. The hotel is clearly approaching the time where the owners will be considering a refurbishment, but the communal areas are largely kept clean and tidy. The hotel offers breakfast at £19.50 per person. You get a discounted offer by email after you book, and a further discounted offer of £15.50 at check in. We said we would think about it and let them know, we were told it was only available there and then, we declined. This was actually a good move on our part as we found some great breakfast options in the local area and the hotel breakfast area is reportedly somewhat chaotic. The downsides. They offer the option of having daily housekeeping, rather than it being a default, by placing a sign saying “please refresh room” on the outside of the door which we did. Both days our room was missed by housekeeping even though we let reception know as we went out for the day on day two at 8am. The receptionist suggested we had left “do not disturb” on our door (we hadn’t) but assured us she’d let housekeeping know to attend to our room asap, but on our return at 4pm it remained “unrefreshed”. We were told to wait in the bar while they would find someone available. Which they did. Secondly, the air con turns itself off at random meaning on all three nights we were woken up with the room stifling hot. Thirdly, only a small irritant; the shower head points to the wall when you turn the shower on and refuses to stay put in any other direction no matter how hard you try. Issues like these happen to the best places, but, although friendly, nobody seems in the slightest but surprised or bothered. When we reported the second day of no housekeeping were sent to wait in the bar, where we ordered a couple of pints. Wouldn’t it have been nice if these had been “on the house”? A gesture which would have gone a long way to making us forget the issue happened at all. Similarly it would have been nice if the reception staff could have seemed just the slightest bit interested in the problems we reported. It just feels like whoever manages the hotel doesn’t actually care and this attitude has filtered down to the staff. It’s a shame as this could be a fabulous hotel with just a little thought in the direction of guest service. Would I stay again? Possibly. But I’d probably firstly remember that there’s a nice looking Hampton By Hilton just across the road."

"Unfortunately, our stay fell short of what we expected from a four-star hotel. The location is very good and we encountered some lovely members of staff, but there were several issues that collectively made the stay disappointing. Parking was particularly difficult. We were directed to Charlotte Street car park, around an eight-to-ten-minute walk away, but weren’t told beforehand that we could drop passengers and luggage at the hotel first. I was travelling with my 71-year-old mum, who struggles with walking, so making that journey with our luggage was far from ideal, particularly with pavement works taking place along the route. Better information before arrival would have made a huge difference. Unfortunately, the cleanliness of our room was also below the standard I would expect, particularly given the price of our stay. Breakfast was another disappointment. The buffet itself was fine, but the options weren’t properly explained when we were seated, our table had no cutlery and it was difficult to find staff when we wanted to order. My daughters waited a fair while for pancakes and bacon, and when they arrived the quality wasn’t great, with one pancake particularly hard and seemingly stale. We chose to go elsewhere for breakfast the following morning. There were positives, particularly the location and some friendly staff, but overall the accumulation of issues meant the stay didn’t feel like good value for money and wasn’t the enjoyable experience we had hoped for."

"Breakfast could be improved, there was plenty of variety. however they were room temperature never hot hot . "