Catarina on reception is doing her best – but she’s all alone and busy on the telephone explaining the rate to a potential guest while several actual guests (including me) are waiting to check in.
It’s not her fault, but you might think that a brand new hotel just off the Brighton seafront would do anything to avoid this sort of hiatus.
The Maldron opened last month. It has 221 rooms and is round the corner from The Grand Hotel, forever known as where Margaret Thatcher survived an IRA bomb attack.
Catarina assigns me to a room on the fifth floor. All is well until I inspect the bathroom, which has dirty soapy water in the basin left by a previous guest.
It’s a blocked drain, so I go back down to Catarina, who gives me a different room on the second floor.
The Inspector stayed at the Maldron, Brighton, a brand new hotel with 221 rooms, one of which is pictured here
It’s functional, bereft of much imagination. There are kitsch prints on the wall, which do, at least, add some colour. When I take a shower and squirt some soap into my hand, the whole dispenser falls off the wall.
On the plus-side – and why a fair number of overseas tourists are staying – it’s not bad value right now while a 20 per cent new opening discount is in place. Overall, the Maldron has all the trademarks of an airport hotel: big, tinny, overlit, anti-theft hangers, ghastly Muzak, officious voice in the lift, TV screens in the bar and eating areas.
The feeling is one of about to go somewhere, rather than having arrived.
The hotel is set close to the famous Brighton Seafront (above). After a disappointing stay, the Inspector says ‘it’s a relief to walk on the beach’
But I enjoy my shrimp tacos and then play safe with a half-decent burger. Service is erratic. Twice I ask for a glass of tap water but it never arrives and at one point I get up to search for a member to staff in the hope of getting a second glass of wine.
It’s more of the same at breakfast: press-button coffee machine on go-slow; powdery scrambled eggs; waxen bacon swimming in fat and infuriating toasters that never do the job.
After all this, it’s a relief to walk on the beach. You get what you pay for, I suppose.
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