St Andrews Town Hotel

An impressive building, but cold in both atmosphere & temperature and when walking the corridors felt like an institution - devoid of fixtures and fittings hardly any pictures on the walls for example yet, presumably the place had some history to it, scruffy external appearance and poorly illuminated externally at night. Poorly stocked bar no nibbles or sparkling water for example. Whilst the cooked breakfast was good the breakfast buffet was dismal -still you get what you pay for and I simply needed to to break a long journey for the night, sadly this place is not recognising its true potential.

Where to start? On arrival the hotel frontage looked very run down, nothing like the photo. Apart from a large tree in the foyer there was no token anywhere to it being Christmas. We booked a "premium" room but were initially shown to one which was clearly "standard". It was freezing and the manager was unable to turn the aircon to heat. When we complained he moved us to what I would say was a premium room. The armchair in there was filthy so on request he replaced it. He also replaced the two tea cups which had lipstick marks and stains on the bottom, and the two glasses which were 1/4 full of water. We checked the bed, which was very clean. We had some stuff to do in town so we left shortly after but had a brief discussion with the manager, expressing our disappointment with the hotel. He was keen for us to leave rather than issue a poor review, but as we were staying for only 1 night we decided at that late stage to stick with what we had. On our return a couple of hours later the room was very cold and proceeded to get colder. My wife ended up watching the Strictly semifinal sitting on the bed in woolly hat, coat and gloves. Eventually I decided enough was enough and went to reception to ask for help in adjusting the aircon. A young lad had replaced the manager; we thought at first he had succeeded but in fact it was still just circulating cold air, making the situation worse. He also admitted, after doing some research, that the only form of heat in the bathroom, an electric towel rail, would not work due to missing wiring. That room, having a tiled floor and leaky single glazing, was perishing. I requested a fan heater, and was given the only one available, which was heating the foyer. That did at least render the rooms habitable overnight.