“First impressions were that the apartment had a pleasant layout with good facilities and on the face of it cleanliness seemed good.”
However, the less immediately noticeable areas threw up some shortcomings. These included thick cobwebs behind the fire, the WC and the basin. Dust on the top of the settee backs, on the curtain poles and skirtings.
The most serious hygiene issue affected the bedding. We always take our own bedding to counter situations like this. When the bed was stripped off, the pillows were yellow! There were no pillow protectors nor a mattress protector. In the leaving instructions, you are requested to remove all bed linen but LEAVE PILLOW AND MATTRESS PROTECTORS IN PLACE. Leaving them in place would have meant yellow protectors instead of yellow pillows. My guess is that a previous guest, quite rightly, ignored that instruction and removed the protectors and there have never been any put back since.
There were a few minor issues, such as light bulbs blown and no replacements available, that on their own don't add up to much, but overall I could not say that it was a great experience given that rents have rocketed to double what they were before the pandemic. We have stayed in The Lakes many times over the past 15 years or so and our experience is that those properties where the owners live on site and manage them personally, tend to be better than those let through agents with hired cleaners. Whilst we were here we witnessed two cleaners go into an apartment at 0920 and out again at 0955. That should give a good indication of how thorough they are.
In summary, we have had worse stays than this one but several that were far better and at more modest cost. It seems that the opportunity to give the property a thorough spring clean during the long lockdown has been missed.
We agree that 20 minutes is not long enough to clean an apartment, and the apartments are all privately owned.
Owner relations
