Penguin Tourist Information Centre Tours and Activities

We stayed for a few nights at Balmoral on York, in a Premier Queen Room. Room was okay - slightly outdated but clean, and comfortably sized. You can open the window which is handy for fresh air circulation, but there is no flyscreen. Location wise is really great. Very close to city centre - walking distance to the shops, restaurants and bars. Free parking space is a fantastic added bonus - there were plenty when we were there. Breakfast (we had continental breakfast included) was okay - simple but plentiful and good variety of choices. Staff is pretty good - although it seems there was only one person attending to breakfast and front desk (assumed maybe because it was winter). Overall, we enjoyed our stay.

Good location, great view, great space. Couple of things let it down. You can see they do a clean between visitors but there is no sign of deep cleans. So much dust/stains. Seeing all that dust meant I didn’t trust the kitchen to be clean and only used it to make a cup of tea after washing the cup. It might have been clean but maybe it wasn’t. It is a bit of a shock when you walk into the property as there is low light and black walls with intense looking faces. Felt unsafe on initial approach. This eased once we got used to the place and realised it was part of the change philosophy. However kind of think customer should come first and that just is not a welcoming hallway.