밸리갤리 캐슬 호텔

Hotel very well maintained. Extremely disappointed with the breakfast. The food may be of top quality but the cooking was not.

Comfortable, quiet stay in Ballygally Castle. Bar nice ambience, atmosphere great and right beside the sea and Glenariff. Relaxing time, will be back.

The location is beautiful! It's a castle with a hotel built around it facing the ocean. It's very accessible with free parking. There is a Spar on the same side of the street and a pub 2 minutes down the road. The front desk staff is very sweet and lovely, but the restaurant staff is mediocre. We had dinner at the restaurant, and I asked them to replace two glasses since they had very visible lipstick marks. The server brought back the same two glasses that have obviously been just wiped clean, and one of them still had the dirt on the rim, just smudged around. Disappointing. If you're hungry, just go to the pub. Bartender Danny was amazing and definitely the star of the hotel along with Catherine at the front desk.

This hotel has long been one of our favourite places to stay, and we have returned several times each year for many years. Because of that loyalty, I feel it is only fair to be honest about our most recent experience, which unfortunately left me disappointed. Over time, we have noticed a number of changes. While I appreciate that businesses must evolve, many of these changes appear to favour cost-saving measures rather than enhancing the guest experience. As someone who has supported the hotel consistently, that is disheartening. We dined in the Garden Restaurant for a celebratory meal, and I ordered the 10oz sirloin steak at £36.00 the most expensive item on the menu. I have ordered this steak many times before and have always enjoyed it. However, I was surprised to see that it no longer comes with mushrooms and onion rings, but instead with watercress salad, chips, and peppercorn sauce. The revised presentation immediately felt like a downgrade. I asked for the watercress salad to be removed, as it is not something I enjoy and, frankly, does little to enhance what should be a premium dish. This left me with simply a steak, chips, and sauce. When the meal arrived, the salad was still on the plate and had to be taken away. Once removed, the plate looked sparse my wife even commented on how bare it appeared. What was once a luxurious four-star hotel dish now resembled something you might expect from a local café diner. To make matters worse, the peppercorn sauce was noticeably sweet and quite unlike the proper peppercorn sauce I have had many times before at the hotel. I did mention this to Joel, the duty manager, who was very pleasant and attentive. The final disappointment came with the bill. I later noticed that a discretionary service charge of £10.80 had been added. While I understand that some international hotels apply such charges, this was not mentioned to me at the time. Yes, it may be printed on the menu, but as a regular customer I was focused on helping my wife choose her meal not scanning for additional charges. As someone who was already feeling that the food offering had been reduced while prices remained premium, discovering an added discretionary charge only compounded my annoyance. The following morning at breakfast, there was no orange juice available only orange cordial. I was told they had run out because it is “very popular.” My view is simple: if it is popular, then surely stock levels should reflect that. Particularly now that discretionary charges are being applied, it seems reasonable to expect basic breakfast items to be available. I note that this has happened before at the same hotel during our Christmas stay of 2025. Over the years, I have raised concerns with Scott, who has always responded, and I appreciate that. However, I cannot recall a time when Hastings Hotels have proactively offered any tangible gesture of goodwill following repeated issues especially given that this is not an inexpensive hotel to stay in. In closing, as a loyal returning guest, I would simply prefer to see standards maintained rather than diluted. I would have preferred my steak served as it traditionally was with mushrooms, onion rings, and a proper peppercorn sauce reflecting the quality one expects from a four-star luxury hotel charging premium prices. Instead, it feels as though changes are being made primarily for the benefit of profit margins rather than customer experience. I hope this feedback is taken in the constructive spirit in which it is intended. We have always enjoyed staying here, which is precisely why this recent experience was so disappointing.

This is our home from home