The Little Emily

Just off the seafront great location

We stay in a lot of guesthouses as we move around. We don’t leave many public reviews on tripadvisor & google because of what we now do, but every now and then a place does deserve a bit of a constructive writeup. …

We stay in a lot of guesthouses as we move around. We don’t leave many public reviews on tripadvisor & google because of what we now do, but every now and then a place does deserve a bit of a constructive writeup.We ran a guest house for over ten years. Negative reviews are something to take seriously and often highlight ‘little’ problems that the operators overlook or where they have let a standard drop. Other negative reviews can simply be someone with an axe to grind to get a part refund but should still be taken seriously and if its legitimate then always give some money back otherwise if they complain to their bank or credit card company and exercise their rights, you’ll end up with the entire fee taken from you by the bank under the credit card agreements.What we’re saying is we’re not easily put off by a few negative reviews. Keep a balance and open mind.See a more detailed review on another trip related site..Our experienceThe booking was done direct by phone, no actual problems noted other than the price we were quoted was £5 higher than the booking dot com website, which in our opinion and experience that site should be avoided but that’s another story.We didn’t receive any email or texts confirming our booking, normally something would arrive explaining check in/out times and a bit of info, but not an issue.We arrived at around 2:30pm, The owner isn’t a very chatty person so it was a little awkward but that could be shyness or experience if he’s a new owner and not used to dealing with the public.It really does take a while to build confidence. We had to ask for info rather than it being volunteered, as an owner you get asked the same questions over and over and become very well-rehearsed, another reason for a good booking confirmation document.First impressions, tricks of the trade. Take a deep smell of the room, if the door has been closed for a while, you’ll pickup on cleaning smells, linen, carpet etc. those few seconds can tell you a lot about the cleanliness of the room. Has it been overloaded with air freshener, that’s a sign of a cover up.Then stand and look, is it dusty, are their stains on the furniture, carpets, or walls, if there are bedside lamps, look at the bulb, its amazing how many cleaners overlook the bedside lamp, look under the bed, these can be dusty places if the cleaners are just doing the top side of what they can see. All these things are a good indication of cleanliness. No problems seen here, all looking good.Don’t look at the décor too deeply as long as it’s clean with nothing too majorly broken accept it, many owners work long hours and fitting in maintenance time or booking tradespersons around guest visits it a challenge or costly especially at the hight of the season.Keep in mind that the last guest moved out at 10am and the next one arrives as 3pm, its not long to do a proper clean , linen change and fix any minor problems and of course get arround all the other rooms on changeover day as well.Most owners will do the bulk of their maintenance and decorating during the quiet periods from November to March. If you really want to see a place at its best or worse visit in March just before the season gets going.It all looked and smelt very good,The ensuite, again all very good and clean.There are legal requirements of how often the mattress is to be replaced whether its at its end of life or not. People do things on mattresses, body fluids, smoke (even though they are not meant too) e-cigarette smoke is vial to those who do not smoke and it gets into the fabric, bugs etc.Mattress and bedding clean, again other tick.So far we’re not finding anything fundamentally negative,Even though the location is one street away from the main pedestrian route through town, its noticeably quiet.The bed is very firm, it’s not lumpy or worn just very very firm. More akin to a European bed. Us softy Brits prefer a softer bed. Theres nothing wrong with the bed if you like a vey firm.Wifi terrible, we manage wifi, problems are easyly fixed.

Stayed here from 27/7/24 to 3/8/24 was happy enough as wasn't my first choice but was ok, the cleaners only cleaned before arrival and once during, so had no clean towels and could have done with a better quality of bed, very noisy guest house other guests making quite alot noise coming in at 1am but the landlord was friendly enough.