The Principal York

The common areas look really grand.

A four star price for a two star room... Not worth it. We were sold on the look of the lobby, shared spaces and strong overall rating. This was the only thing that did not dissapoint. After that it all went downhill however. We got a room at the end of the building without wifi. The walk towards it was through a dark corridor (there is hardly daylight) with dirty and stained carpets. The room was very damp and small (12m2) and was just 30mtr from the train tracks. The diesel locs made sure you couldnt really get a good night sleep. We wanted to order roomservice, but reception was not answering the phone and when they finally did - after three unsuccesful attempts- our call had to be forwarded. Overal sense tgat I got was that they really dont care about you unless you have one of the more expensive rooms.

(Had to include this because they would not let me right everything in the what didn't you like) My mother and I booked this as a weekend trip, we picked one of the Annex room - to me this means a room with a sloped ceiling. When I arrived at the hotel, turns out the Annexed means in a completely different building, this was a huge let down as the reason we had picked the hotel was because of the beautiful building. To get to this building we had to go underground and pass all the staff kitchens, there was an odd smell down there and it made us feel like we were 'hidden', I though it was a bit deceiving. The room was facing the rail station, meaning that whenever a train passed by the room would shake a bit. The room though was more spacious, but our spirits were low as we felt like we were staying at a holiday in rather than a fancy hotel. We came back to the room after exploring, there was a smell of sewage in the room, we could barely open the window. Then we had to get staff to come and help us turn on the heating. The next morning when we were ready to shower, the water pressure was absolutely dismal. When we tried to call there was no answer, no answer the 5 times we tried to call, I shudder to think what would've happened if we were in a state of emergency. I went down and decided to speak with the duty manager, I explained to Sarah the situation. I did not feel heard at all, she kept on making excuses and justifying, there was not one 'I apologize' or 'I'm sorry for your discomfort' etc. Just excused.

She offered for us to shower in a different room - this was perplexing, as if we were going to take our suitcases all over the hotel to a room that we weren't even staying in. I then asked if we could move rooms (what should've been offered initially) she reluctantly agreed and showed me a room with two twin bed in the 'main house' and told me that we would've had to pay more for these rooms, it felt like a joke, the room was minuscule, I reluctantly agreed to this room. I then asked her to include complementary breakfast as a gesture of good will, she then responded 'you can either have the room or breakfast, not both'. When I returned to the original room frustrated, I called back the duty manager and told her that we are going to leave the hotel as we had lost faith and wanted our money back. She agreed to reimburse use for the first night stay, provide us with a room change, and with breakfast. We were happy with the result but honestly I felt emotionally drained from the whole experience. We were only staying at the hotel two nights and then were faced with a rude duty manager who felt like she was doing us a favour. When you book these kind of hotels you expect a certain level of service and though the staff was nice and polite I found the manager to be hostile and filled with excuses, not a good standard for such a hotel. The rest of our stay was fine but I definitely wont be returning to this place, which is a shame because the hotel is extremely beautiful and well situated.