Hotels vs. bed and breakfast

The Merchant's House, Derry

 I can't remember when I last had a touring holiday - i.e. a holiday where you move from place to place.  Usually we book an apartment somewhere and stay put.  But on our recent trip to Ireland we took the car over and travelled around, sleeping in seven different beds over eight nights.  One of the interesting lessons this taught me is the need to shop carefully when booking hotels.

Far and away the best accommodation for us was the elegant Merchant's House, a Derry town house owned by Joan Pyne and her husband.  We had an attractive bedroom at the rear of the first floor, the front room being a stunning sitting-room for guests.  Breakfast was served round a large table in the dining-room below, which gives you the opportunity to mix - briefly - with others staying.  In our case there was an Australian couple, a trio from Bilbao and a silent Frenchman.

I hadn't known what to expect, but had been attracted by the architecture.  The interior was a dream of perfect proportions and beautiful detailing in cornices and ceiling roses.  Joan was a delight and breakfast was copious.  And we slept like tops in the comfortable bed.

Canal Court Hotel, Newry

This was all very different from the soulless monoliths I had booked us into in Newry and Sligo.  In Newry the Canal Court, at a cost of £115, offered a spacious room overlooking a carpark, but the public areas on the ground floor were a nightmare of bad taste and thronging partygoers, increasingly the worse for drink as the night wore on.  The ground floor bar was dominated by a vast screen showing a football match. Call me oldfashioned, but I expect a bit of style in what purports to be a four star hotel.

In Sligo I'd been impressed by the picture of the Clarion Hotel.  I hadn't thought it through: to fill a place that size during the Easter school holidays you need to bring in the families and children.  We had a particularly garrulous tot in the room next door, whose delighted babble could easily be heard through a communicating door.  When the tot fell quiet, its siblings and cousins and friends amused themselves by running up and down the long corridor.  The Clarion Hotel was originally built as a lunatic asylum.  We left before our sanity was threatened.

The basic contrast in all this was between the corporate and the personal.  It's not just a question of cost - the Clarion was reasonable enough.  But if you're offering budget rates in a large hotel it looks as if you'll be employing undertrained staff with little interest in making you feel like a valued customer.  Something that came naturally to Joan Pyne in the Merchant's House.

Antony Mair 

Clarion Hotel, Sligo