Thorne - The Punchbowl Inn
Punchbowl inn, Field Side, Thorne, Doncaster DN8 4BE
July 2022
Look up The Punchbowl Inn on Google, and you’ll see it has a rating of four stars. That, I think, is an indication of just how much you shouldn’t trust internet ratings; I may be in a minority, but I think there’s a strong case for compulsory assessment of accommodation businesses, like Visit England used to do. On Google it also says ‘Staff required to disinfect surfaces between visits’. Bear that in mind when reading the following.
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Viv and I travel to the Doncaster area at least once a year; I sponsor a trolleybus at the museum there, somewhat in memory of my late father, who was a transport fanatic. Normally we stay at the Premier Inn in the city centre, but this time it couldn’t fit us in; looking around the area, I booked us into The Punchbowl Inn in Thorne for the two nights we wanted.
I did know Thorne a bit beforehand; I used to work for BMW, which has a distribution depot there, and have passed through on walks on at least one occasion in the past. It is in what might be termed an ‘area of regeneration’; Hatfield Colliery, the last deep level coal mine in the UK, was one of the local employers, and closed as recently as 2015. I also know Yorkshire well, and the differences between north and south; I lived in Leeds and then Bradford for a total of over ten years. I wasn’t expecting a luxury experience, but, with the website promoting weddings and functions, I expected decent levels of comfort and cleanliness. I was significantly disappointed.
Approaching the hotel from the station I noted that one of the large brick gate posts had been recently demolished, presumably by an errant vehicle. Other brickwork in the car park also seemed to be falling apart. Looking up at the building, I saw faded and peeling paintwork and missing roof tiles:
The image on the website has clearly been subjected to some photoshopping.
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Entering the hotel, I was surprised at how quiet it was. A small function was possibly taking place in one area, but there was no hustle of waiters or sign of busy managers. We checked in at the bar, before being shown to our room, up some stairs which clearly needed vacuuming. I realised I hadn’t been given or offered a receipt other than the one for my credit card payment; I would normally expect a proper invoice.
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Our room was a curious shape, and seemed to have been laid out in the 1980s - there was a small TV off to one side, a tiny open unit for hanging clothes, a Corby taking up space where a proper wardrobe could go. It was light, with net-curtained windows, only one of which would open - and that was difficult to close, because it was over a tiny dressing table and the handle swung out when it opened.
The net curtains were less clean than I would have hoped for, given the images on the website, and the main curtains didn’t fit, they were way too narrow. Lighting was by chandeliers, closer inspection of which revealed that the management might have begun to realise why such style of lights aren’t a good idea in a hotel - they need a lot of cleaning.
The floor was covered with a fairly tough and seemingly clean carpet, the style being not unusual for hotel room floors as they do get a lot of wear - people aren’t wearing carpet slippers when they are staying away from home.
Tea and coffee making necessities were in one corner; two cups, plenty of tea bags and coffee, a few milk cartons, but only one spoon and one saucer. There were no tumblers either in the room or the ensuite.
In the ensuite I noted that the catch to lock the door was missing, the window blind had fallen off the wall, and the extractor fan wasn’t working. Investigation of this revealed that the isolator switch was off, turning it on solved the problem. The fan itself was partly blocked by an accumulation of dust; that Google reference to disinfecting between visits struck me as rather creative. These fans are something that a hotel inspector would check, and not cleaning them is a sure sign that a business hasn’t understood what is expected.
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There aren’t many places to eat in Thorne, so, unusually for us, we ate in the restaurant that evening. The menus were confusing: a chalkboard, and a menu for pizzas, childrens meals, and heaven knows what. Viv ordered a curry and expected it to come with rice, but got chips; she should have been offered the choice, for someone else did get rice.
The food was plentiful, the vegetables somewhat overcooked for my taste, but at the price - £11.99 for a large meal - it was good value. Drinks were a reasonable price, with real ale from the Old Mill Brewery in nearby Snaith properly served - the management clearly knows how to look after quality beer. We ate our meals in the orangery extension on the front of the bar, the tables seemed clean although the windowsills at one end were home to a few dead insects that were there both evenings - clearly the area hadn’t been properly cleaned during the intervening day.
The second day of our visit being a Saturday, I had half expected a wedding to be taking place, but there wasn’t one - while we were there we never saw more than perhaps ten or fifteen customers, and one staff member behind the bar; with the extension and function rooms the business could perhaps cope with a hundred or more.
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Back in our room for the night I noticed there was no wifi, and no information brochure. 4G broadband was slow; this is a major drawback for any hotel today. I couldn’t even check the hotel website for breakfast times, so had to ask at the bar.
The bed, a key element of the accommodation service that a guest is buying, sadly showed up some significant inadequacies of understanding in terms of what a hotel guest is looking for. The headboard was fixed to the wall, a gap therefore opened up between it and the bed when you sat up to watch TV. This was not aided by providing each guest with just a single, rather tired pillow, and overnight comfort was far from adequate due to the bed having a very flimsy, thin mattress, probably an open coil type. I did check it and it was at least clean, it looked to be quite new, but cheap mattresses don’t last long in an accommodation business - one overweight guest, or a couple indulging in hours of bedtime athletics, will weaken the springs and reduce the support available for later guests. A mattress topper might improve comfort, and I was surprised that no mattress cover had been deployed: people will do messy things in hotel rooms sometimes, and experienced hosts will know that it's best to take precautions.
As well as the uncomfortable mattress, there was traffic noise from the main road outside that impaired our sleep; we could have shut the window, but it was July and rather warm to sleep without an open window. There might have been less noise if we had been able to open the other window, which faced the side of the building, rather than the road.
In the morning we found the shower worked just as they used to in the eighties: there was no thermostatic control, we had to balance the taps to get the right temperature. If someone else in the building ran some hot water it went cold; if you compensated for this, it would later run very hot, when the other person stopped! The shower hose had had a new head fitted recently, but it was the wrong shape for the bracket that was supposed to hold it up; positioning the head for a shower was something of a game. There was no grab rail by the bath to help someone get in or out, and I don’t think the base of the bath had been treated to reduce slips.
The basin in the ensuite was, I must say, of a good size; often hotel rooms have tiny ones, and it's impossible to shave properly in them. A shaver light and socket and a mirror were above the basin, full marks for good design there; there was also a good size window, pity about the aforementioned blind. Next door to the Punchbowl Inn is Thorne police station, I wasn’t arrested for indecent exposure so I guess the obscured glass in the window prevents too much from being seen from outside.
The tiles in the bathroom looked quite new, and the grout was clean although cracked in a few places, as was the sealant around the bath.
Breakfast was a strange experience. There were no menus on the tables, the waitress merely asked us what we would like for breakfast, offering various cooked options. On the second day we did ask about cereal, and there was some at the back of the restaurant - we should have been guided to that on our first morning. We weren’t offered juice either; we asked for it on the second morning, and thought we were told that the waitress would bring some, but it never appeared.
The breakfasts themselves were of good quality - hot, and with seemingly good ingredients. Drinks, though, were a bit strange; I asked for tea, on the first morning I was given a pot of it with two teabags, with a mug and jug of milk; on the second day I think I must have looked like I needed waking up, for there were four teabags in my teapot, with enough water for just one mug of tea. They do go for strong tea in Yorkshire, but that struck me as overdoing it - and successful hospitality businesses will have strict controls on what constitutes any item on their menu, a pot of tea ordered on one day will be the same as one on the next.
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Arriving back at our room on the Saturday afternoon we found that it had not been serviced. I don’t know if that was a covid thing or it is just an expectation that guests will tidy their own rooms, but I did feel that we should have been told.
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We had arrived at The Punchbowl Inn mid afternoon on a Friday, and left at ten on the following Sunday morning. The stair carpet that had needed vacuuming when we arrived still needed it on the Sunday; on closer inspection, one of the items of grime that required removal there was a dead fly. Viv - having some sight issues and therefore being more sensitive to touch - also pointed out that the bannister rail and newel posts on the stairs were sticky, and had been all three days. In fact, we never saw a cleaner, or evidence of any cleaning, at any time in our forty-two hour stay there. So much for ‘Staff required to disinfect surfaces between visits’.
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I don’t know anything about the circumstances of the business behind The Punchbowl Inn. I am sure they have suffered greatly during lockdowns, and may be short of capital to invest in remedying some of the faults we found - such as the exterior paintwork, or the fittings in the rooms. I do wonder whether some of the staff involved are inexperienced in running an accommodation business; many people take over a BnB or hotel when they move out of a different type of work, and often don’t understand a few key points about hoteliery:
The standards of cleanliness in a hotel need to be far above those one might accept at home - any grime at home is yours, whereas any grime in a hotel is who knows what;
Visible faults will make guests question what is going on in areas they can’t see - dead flies left for days on restaurant window sills show cleaning isn’t being done, what about in the kitchen?
A slick website will attract customers, but if you fail to deliver to the standards you seem to promise you will be slammed in reviews.
I think those running The Punchbowl Inn may fall into this category. There’s a few things they could do to improve their delivery that will cost little:
Work out whether they are making a profit, and what they need to do to make enough profit;
Sleep in rooms in the hotel, record your experiences honestly, and consider what can be done to improve them;
Stay in competitor businesses, and see what they offer, and at what price;
Improve attention to detail significantly; have checklists for everything - cleaning, meal contents, manager’s daily checks, and make sure that staff deliver what is on the list, and no more;
Fix minor issues - like the lock catches on ensuites;
Consider mattress covers, toppers and new pillows, two per guest;
Have neat, clear menus for the restaurant, breakfast menus on the table with information as to what is available;
Provide room information folders;
Get the wifi working (the website indicates that free wifi is available);
Tell guests if rooms aren’t to be serviced;
Look honestly at your website and consider whether it might set expectations higher than what you can deliver - if so, determine what can be done to narrow the gap between expectation and reality;
Provide proper receipts for the accomodation;
Develop training plans for all staff and see that they get the training they need (which can be in house, on-the-job);
Develop a plan to upgrade the accommodation - perhaps to remove the Corbys and rejig things, or strip the rooms to plumbing and bare floors and work up from there - so that, when funds are available, you can make progress.
When I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for my meal on the second night of our stay I did think to check on the hygiene score for The Punchbowl Inn, on the Doncaster council website: it was actually the Free Press that showed that it scored three out of five - that means ‘generally satisfactory’. That may be, but I didn’t like looking at the dead moth that had been on the windowsill for at least the preceding twenty four hours.
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There are people saying that a major recession is coming, with interest rates up at ‘normal’ levels (5% or so), and businesses that are struggling will either have to improve their act or go under. I do hope that The Punchbowl Inn manages the former, I’d like to consider staying there again in a year or two’s time.
