The Cliffden Hotel

Bit outdated but this is well placed near the beach and promenade. It is very well maintained and the staff were very helpful. Will come back again. It is beautiful place with nice wooded are and a pond.

Cliffden Hotel staff made me very welcome. A comfortable bed helped me sleep well, though I needed to use earplugs to cut out slight sound from adjacent rooms - an old building with thin-ish interior walls. The gardens are lovely and it's a short walk down to the sea front with beautiful bay and beach. The food was good

We clearly booked the wrong weekend to stay here. It was our son’s birthday on Friday 14 Feb and he works in Teignmouth, a good excuse for a break to visit him. I booked two nights at the Cliffden Hotel. I booked well in advance knowing it was Valentine’s weekend and would be busy. I found the communication with the hotel not the best. I’d messed a few times, but hadn’t been contacted back until I rang them. I imagine this hotel had been grand in its day. The grounds are absolutely beautiful even in the rain. We checked in and were given instructions etc about breakfast and the pool. We were very much looking forward to our stay. We were situated on the second floor, so walked up a very grand staircase onto a grander landing, sadly starting to look a little on the tired side the further we went. Our room was up again, around a corner, along another corridor and down a slop where that part of the hotel definitely didn’t look so grand. Eventually, we got to our room. It didn’t look like the pictures on Booking.com. The room was very basic, tired looking and in need of refurbishment. The windows were old, dilapidated with blinds and looked grubby. We were going straight out and weren’t back until late so decided just to use it to lay our heads. The next morning we got up early and tried to have a shower. It was ridiculous, the water pressure was appalling. You couldn’t get under the shower head and when you took it off the hook no water came out. I’ve had some bad showers before, but this one takes the biscuit. Come on Cliffden Hotel, you need to do something about this. You can’t book these rooms out if you can’t provide the proper facilities. We thought we’d get down for breakfast at a decent time, because they run a traffic light system for breakfast. 7:30 - 8:15 GREEN (delays unlikely) 8:15 - 9:00 AMBER (delays possible) 9:00 onwards RED (delays likely) We went down before 9am, on amber, thinking it wouldn’t be too bad. How wrong we were! The dining room was packed; the conservatory area also full and the only spare tables were piled high with dirty crockery, cups and glasses. We had to clear a table ourselves and I found napkins, glasses mugs and cutlery to relay myself. I did ask a young waitress to please wipe the table of food which she did. Other guests by us said “you’ll be lucky to get anything to eat, there’s nothing left.” We went to see if we could get anything. Everything had been ransacked. Even the conserves and bread for the toaster was empty. We managed to get a coffee and went back to our table to wait for the hot plate to be replenished. We tried six times to see if anything had been replenished. My husband spoke to the chef who was bringing in about 12 sausages (they were gone in an instant) and he explained that they had 80 people staying and everyone had come down at the same time. There was two young waitresses who we were informed were doing the washing up in the kitchen too. It was chaos and people were complaining. The problem was we noticed that some people who had received breakfast were going back for more once the hot plate had been replenished so tables in the conservatory further away from the hot plate didn’t get a chance to get anything to eat and there wasn’t anyone to oversee what was going on. We decided that we weren’t going to stay another night and leave straight away. Other guests were doing the same. Some guests were saying they always stayed here and had never seen it like this. I went to speak with JD on reception who was very understanding and apologetic about our complaints. It’s unfortunate, because this hotel has great reviews and I understood it was a ridiculously busy weekend and clearly there wasn’t enough staff on, but sadly it spoilt our weekend. I have been offered the room rate back for the night we didn’t stay, although I’ve not received it yet, but obviously we missed out on breakfast and travelled home without having anything to eat. It was a shame that it wasn’t a good experience for us and for our son whom we’d planned to do things with in Plymouth that day.