We stayed at The Beacon Hotel in Dublin for four nights after reading good reviews about it on various websites. The hotel is located a little way out of Dublin, so we had to take the LUAS there, which wasn't a problem, but in fact was a nice 15 minute trip. The hotel is a short uphill walk from the LUAS station, luckily it wasn't raining.
The Beacon promotes itself as being 'where boutique hotel style and design blend with outstanding service to create a new concept in luxury travel'. The reception is light and airy, but a tiny bit pretentious – a chandelier on the floor, a double bed with a hole in it that's a seat, a silver and purple pool table next to a huge silver and purple free standing mirror… an oval table with perspex cubes of what appeared to be pistachio shells but were in fact bits of pot pourri… and so it goes on.
The staff are lovely and friendly – even when I had to keep going to get our key renewed, even though we were staying for 4 nights the key would stop working after 12 noon for some bizarre reason, very annoying! Our room was lovely, comfy bed, gorgeous bathroom which was slightly spoilt by having a wierd grubby wooden bench in it (!). The breakfasts were excellent, although Sunday breakfast is a 'help-yourself' hot buffet with shop bought sliced bread, not as nice as the weekday breakfasts. the worst thing had to be the dreadful thump-thump of music from the restaurant/reception which could be heard into the morning hours, not good at all – slightly grumpy old woman speaking here!
Ovearll I would say it was a nice hotel, but it all feels as though they are trying a bit too hard… My advice would be if you want to see Dublin there are just as nice hotels nearer the centre, save your legs for the sightseeing!
