This hotel is in a wonderful location: on the seafront just opposite the pier, close to the Royal Pavillion and the Lanes. The exterior hints at past splendours, and I'm sure it must have been magnificent in its time.
I stayed for 2 nights while attending a conference in Brighton. Although my room was on the ground floor, to reach it I had to traipse through the basement. There was a lift to get down to this but at the far end there's no alternative to the stairs so not suitable for people with mobility problems.
The basement itself smelt of damp, and patches on the wall indicated that they had a significant problem with this, almost up to ceiling level. Fortunately the smell did not continue into the guest bedrooms.
My room had a small, slanting window in one corner. An examination of the building's exterior explained why – the window was merely one side of a bay, the central section having been plastered over so that two bedrooms could share one window. The curtains were hanging off their hooks – I complained about this on arrival but nothing was done about it – so I had to wedge them using a side table in order to get them to close properly. There were patches of damaged plaster on the wall, and the bed had a noticeable slant to one side (luckily I was alone in a double room so able to sleep on the other side).
Some of my colleagues did get better rooms overlooking the sea front, but even they had complaints about the temperature – which varied from arctic to sauna, with neither heating nor air conditioning working (the latter only available in some rooms, anyway). And everyone complained about the noise: at the front of the hotel it came from traffic and night-clubbers, at the back from a busy coach station.
Breakfast, to be fair, was not bad: a hot buffet with a good spread of cereals, yoghurts and bakery produce besides. Our group had dinner there on one evening, however, and that was not good: my vegetarian option of risotto was inedible, and the meat-eaters were not much happier.
If you're only staying one or two nights and get a cheap enough room the hotel is just about adequate. But the rates weren't that great when we stayed and if I had been paying for myself I would have checked out and gone elsewhere.
