Riviera Hotel - Weymouth, United Kingdom 

room was smelly, bathroom very poor and shower not working, carpet dirty, food bad, will not use again.

Date of stay: Friday 1 – Sunday 3 February 2008 Reviewer: A TripAdvisor Member, Oxford UK This hotel used to be a Pontin’s holiday camp, built in 1937. This was not mentioned in the hotel’s publicity. This is a summary of the letter of complaint that I wrote to the hotel management after our stay: The room was cold, damp and draughty It was as draughty as a beach hut. It froze on Friday night and was stormy on Saturday night so effective heating and insulation was essential to our stay. The wind whistled through the gaps around the door. As the door was an external door, opening onto an outside first floor walkway, effective draught proofing was essential on all sides of the door but was present only at the bottom. The heating was inadequate There was a design fault with the heating in the room. The thermostat was positioned in the upper half of the room. As soon as the upper half of the room was warm, the heating cut out. The lower half of the room never reached an adequate temperature. If you were sitting down, it felt cold. It then got even colder until the thermostat cut in again which took some time and could not be brought forward through use of the ‘touch’ control. The floor was always cold and damp. Any belongings left on the floor overnight were damp in the morning. The heating was turned off centrally at midnight. It did not come on again in the morning. We had to get out of bed in order to trigger the thermostat ourselves. The solid concrete construction of the building, the lack of draught proofing and the ancient metal framed windows combined to give the room very poor thermal properties. This should have been compensated by the provision of adequate heating but it was not. Bathroom - The hotel’s web publicity said that we would get a full bathroom with bath but there was no bath. There was no hot water for the shower until 10pm on Saturday. The dining room had an unpleasant smell - This was especially apparent if you entered the room by coming down the stairs from the tower. The smell was reminiscent of vomit. The food was disgusting Most main dishes were reheated or defrosted commercial catering portions. One dessert had not been fully thawed out. The flavours were bland or unpleasant. Some dishes contained unhealthy levels of fat or cooking oil. Vegetables were overcooked. The sauce on the haddock had a skin on it. The ingredients were of poor quality. The vegetables were tinned rather than fresh. The soup was cheap packet soup with a high level of additives such as glutamates. Post war Pontins customers probably ate better than this. The water quality in the pool was very poor - It was cloudy and we had sore red eyes for 24 hours after using the pool. Attempts to resolve these issues during our stay On the day of arrival we asked to change rooms. We were offered three other rooms. They were all the same or worse. For example, one had an unpleasant smell, one was dingy, and one looked out on a dirty concrete wall. We complained about the poor heating to Reception but the complaint was not taken seriously. It was difficult to contact Reception as there was no telephone in the room. Summary of reply from the hotel management: They refuted everything. They said the heating system was similar to that in some Travel Lodge hotels. (This might be true but it doesn’t mean it’s the right system for that building.) They sent me a cheque for ?20.