Bewleys Principal Hotel Review

Overall Rating

Location only

Everything apart from Location

Having recently returned from a short break to Dublin, I feel that I have to share my experiences of the Bewleys Principal Hotel, Fleet Street, Temple Bar, Dublin, with others.

Having stayed in many hotels throughout the world, I have found that unfortunately sometimes the most pleasing areas of certain hotels are the public areas and in particular the main entrances.

So you can imagine how I felt when I entered the grimy and jaded entrance to this hotel in the Temple Bar area of Dublin. On reaching the reception area, things didn't improve, with the lounge seats having holes in them and paint flaking off many of the surfaces. Hoping to make the best of things and having little time to spare, I checked in and was given the keys to my first room, (yes you're catching on already).

The room, which was supposed to be a non smoking double room, turned out to smell like a large ashtray with a double bed placed in the middle, with only half a headboard at the top of the bed. The overwhelming smell of stale smoke was even noticed by a passing cleaner who sprayed some air freshener into the room in the hope of disgising the ever present cigarette aroma. It worked, well for all of 30 seconds. The last ditch effort was to try and open the window which turned out to be broken, so I decided that in the interests of my sanity I would have to change rooms.

This I did and was provided with another non smoking room, this time slightly less grimy and with no aroma to speak of, but with only cigarette burns on the bedspread. I decided that things were unlikely to improve much and so cut my losses with this the better of the two rooms. It even had a rear view of the attached bar and restaurant complete with noisy commercial sized air conditioning units and thick bird droppings, (as mentioned in another hotel review site).

Suffice to say that with all the issues previously mentioned and customer service amounting to nothing more than 'going through the motions', I would definately not recommend that anyone stays at this establishment unless things change drastically. Whilst I was there, an American party were checked in and were also making complaints about the smell of milldew coming from one of their rooms, so it obviously wasn't just our luck.

To top the experience off, the staff at the hotel even tried to charge me twice for the privelage of staying at their establishment, none of which seemed to bother the general manager when I advised him of same.

Having visited Dublin on several occassions and stayed at other hotels, I can safely say that the Bewleys Principal Hotel is by far the worst experience to date. If you want to stay within the Temple Bar area, my advice would be to look elswhere, unless you like paying good money for a totally forgettable experience.

Members' Comments ongogsy's Review

• dornado on 17th Dec 2004

  you can't please everybody. Some you can't please at all

• muckiann on 7th Jan 2006

  I agree. That hotel has been in decline for a long time now and trading on the Bewleys name. They have a new Hotel in Ballsbridge in South Dublin and its lovely.