Balmoral Hotel Belfast

Passable

Liked: We recieved a warm welcome from the receptionist when we arrived.
Disliked: We booked this hotel because it offered no pre-payment, pay at the property. Two days before we were due to arrive, I got a call from a very blunt receptionist wanting to confirm we were arriving the next day. I shared our booking details and confirmed we were arriving the day after to which she replied "I'll need to check if I can fit you in". After confirming she could accomodate out booking as was made via booking.com she asked for card details because they apparently did not have the booking secured, despite me believing this was done via booking.com. I gave her the card details and she took payment for the first night - without telling me that was what she was doing! When I challeneged this and why she had taken payment now when our booking confirmed 'pay at the property' she simply said "if you won't pay, I'll just cancel it" - as we were travelling for The Open and it was 48hours before we were due to arrive, I had no choice but to pay then.The following day - before we travelled, payment was taken for the second night. This was never mentioned during our Thursday night phone call.Needless to say we were disappointed before we even arrived.When we got there on the Saturday night there was a wedding on so the lounge bar was filled with wedding guests and the music blared until midnight. I'd expect, as a common courtesy, to be made aware there was an event in the hotel and there would be significant noise until late.The room appeared clean but was quite dark and a little stuffy. The double bed was in fact two single bads pushed together. The grout in the tiles in the bathroom were crumbling into the shower. The bath mat was stained and the bathroom generally looked quickly cleaned rather than thoroughly cleaned.We realised later that one of the pillows had brown spots on it but there was a single bed in the room with a pillow so we were able to swap it.