Marlborough Hotel - Shanklin, United Kingdom 

We stayed for 2 nights in July 04 and were pleasantly surprised by the convenient location of the hotel to the beach. The room wasn't actually too bad; very dated furnishings and bedding, but of a reasonable size and clean. Breakfast was pretty good too. Unfortunately that is where the plus points end I'm afraid. The front of the hotel was in the process of being painted or renovated and there was scaffolding right against our window. Not intending to spend too much time actually in our room (and in typical British fashion), we decided against complaining and stuck with what we were given - no room discount offered though. And in addition to the lack of privacy afforded to us, renovation work started around 7 or 7:30am each morning and we had decorators clunking building materials against our window and yelling to each other - not very romantic!! To top it all off, on checking out the guy at the front desk accidently billed my card twice (?125 too much), and we had to wait nearly 15 minutes while he fetched someone who knew how to issue a refund. To sum up, Shanklin is a beautiful area on IOW and I would wholeheartedly recommend a visit - but not to this particular hotel.

Stayed at the hotel with a coach party. We were very pleased with the accommodation. Bedrooms were well furnished with tea and coffee making facilities. The hotel was very clean and food was excellent, staff friendly. Would definitely consider staying again. The only slight criticism would be the cold bathroom - a heated towel rail would be an advantage!