Dover, Ramada Hotel

With the Ramada being a big hotel chain, I expected at least a "decent" place to stay in Dover. And while it was decent, it had far too many flaws given the price.

We had to wait for 10 minutes for staff to appear when we checked in. I'm not sure what they were doing, but it wasn't manning the check-in desk.

We had to wait a very long time for dinner in the restaurant too. It was over an hour, and in that time we had considerable trouble getting the attention of any staff in order to get a drink. It wasn't busy.

Don't stay there at the weekend. And if you have to, specifically ask for a room as far away from the bar as possible. It's karaoke night, and our "Executive Suite" was in spitting distance from the bar, so we had to endure the squealing of drunken tourists until the early hours. If I'd known the cheaper Standard Room was much quieter, I would have booked that instead.

And lastly. Our visit to the bar on a non-karaoke night was a disaster. You guessed it! We had to wait sometimes 30 minutes for a staff member to stand still long enough to order a drink. Again, it wasn't busy, but the staff were busy doing something other than attending to their guests. I got the impression they were short-staffed, so by the end of the night there was some senior-looking staff member working the bar. He didn't seem to know what he was doing, and when he gave me a warm beer from the fridge towards the end of the evening (not just "English warm", but warmer than heated room temperature) I was astonished. When I asked for a cold one, he said it's the warm one or nothing because the fridge has been turned off. What the? It was a long unsatisfying conversation. In summary, he was bereft of any common sense, and even more bereft of anything resembling customer service skills.

Basically, unless you're in Dover for business, I'd avoid the whole town. It really doesn't warrant more than half a day of your time.