I've stayed here twice, but never again. I'm generally happy to give a place a second chance, being an ex-hotelier myself and knowing the difficulties of running a hotel well. But....
On my second visit, I was given a room right at the back end of the hotel, so I got to see a fair bit of it on my way there. The entrance is all quite flashy, but behind that the hotel is very dated, and needs a serious deep clean.
There is a bad smell of old grease, the kind you get when a 'restaurant' fries everything and never changes their oil.
The worst thing though, was discovering a plaster stuck the bed sheets when I woke up in the morning. No way that would have survived a trip through a washing machine, so the sheets clearly hadn't been cleaned.
There was nobody at reception at 7am. The lights were off and nobody answered the telephone number. I couldn't tell them about the problem, or request an invoice for my stay.
Tried calling the hotel, but couldn't find a direct number. Complained through hotels.com, and the hotel refused any form of compensation. Hotels.com did offer some OneKey cash which was nice of them to do, but it shouldn't have to be down to them.
I won't stay there again.
On the plus side, if you risk a night at the Staindrop, there is a very nice pub for a good meal and a pub quiz just 2 mins walk down the road, called The Barrel.
