Ideally, we would publish every review we receive, whether positive or negative. However, we won’t display any review that includes or refers to (among other things): I have no knowledge of Watson as a comedian, and saw this mentioned and purely liked the sound of a novel set in a hotel - I always enjoyed Hotel Babylon, and I did think of it numerous times as I read this. This elegant, 19th-century villa has been completely restored and is now a welcoming, 4-star hotel. Surrounded by fragrant citrus groves, the garden is full of exotic flowers and plants and is a great place to relax. The swimming pool is especially inviting during hot summer days. Contributions should be travel related. The most helpful contributions are detailed and help others make better decisions. Please don’t include personal, political, ethical, or religious commentary. Promotional content will be removed and issues concerning Booking.com’s services should be routed to our Customer Service or Accommodation Service teams. Contributions should be appropriate for a global audience. Please avoid using profanity or attempts to approximate profanity with creative spelling, in any language. Comments and media that include hate speech, discriminatory remarks, threats, sexually explicit remarks, violence, or the promotion of illegal activity are not permitted.

Graham's narrative says a lot by what he doesn't say - his repeated meal at home, his loyalty to his work. Chas's world of darkness is on the surface, the more moving tale, though his growth over time to me meant the constant Graham looked even more set in his ways - not embracing changes in technology, wistfully remembering the past. Each review score is between 1-10. To get the overall score that you see, we add up all the review scores we’ve received and divide that total by the number of review scores we’ve received. In addition, guests can give separate ‘subscores’ in crucial areas, such as location, cleanliness, staff, comfort, facilities, value for money and free Wi-Fi. Note that guests submit their subscores and their overall scores independently, so there’s no direct link between them. This is the story of a hotel. An opulent London hotel, from its inception by a Harry Selfridge-like rich dreamer Howard York to the present day. Narrated by two men, our first is the concierge Graham, hired on a whim by York and there to oversee its trials and triumphs over a forty-year span. Our second is Chas, Howard's blind adopted son, raised in the hotel and reclusive in his disability... For a stand-up comedian, Mark Watson is an excellent novelist. Hotel Alpha is mostly set around the fictional hotel of its name, a sort of modern day Hilton in London. The story is told through alternate narratives. The first comes from Graham, concierge and lifeblood of the hotel. The second is from Chas, the hotel owner's blind, adopted son. Both love the hotel and need it but a dark secret threatens to ruin it for both of them. Hotel is handy for train station and it’s easy to get train into Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento etc.

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Swear words, sexual references, hate speech, discriminatory remarks, threats, or references to violence Each review score is between 1 and 10. To get the overall score, we add up all the review scores and divide that total by the number of review scores we received. Guests can also give separate subscores in crucial areas, such as location, cleanliness, staff, comfort, facilities, value, and free WiFi. Guests submit their subscores and their overall scores independently – there’s no direct link between them. Contributions should be appropriate for a global audience. Please avoid using profanity or attempts to approximate profanity with creative spelling, in any language. Comments and media that include 'hate speech', discriminatory remarks, threats, sexually explicit remarks, violence, and the promotion of illegal activity are not permitted. The hotel enjoys a quiet, ideal location, a short walk from the centre of Sant'Agnello and its shops, the local bus stop and the train station. La Marinella beach is located around 300 m away and the centre of Sorrento is roughly 1.5 km from the hotel. Restaurants can be found in the immediate vicinity, whilst Capodichino Airport is about 40 km away. Watson is a very good writer. Assured, confident and funny, he also manages moments of emotion and warmth.

I desperately wanted to like this book, and was sure that it was a solid four star, if not an illustrious five star rating, in the making. Early promotions about this novel gave me the impression that this would be Eleven but in the setting of a hotel. The constant narrative changes, a catalogue of unique voices and a plethora of individual stories that were all woven together to create a tense over-arching plot. I knew from Watson's previous novels that his talent as an author is superlative, and therefore my expectations were very high.

Rooms

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Rooms feature a living area, a kitchen and a bathroom. Air conditioning and central heating ensure comfortable temperatures. A balcony is included as standard in some rooms. Rooms have a double bed or a king-size bed. Extra beds can be requested. A safe, a minibar and a desk are also available. Additional features include a refrigerator and a mini fridge. A direct dial telephone, a television with satellite/cable channels, a plug adapter and WiFi (no extra charge) provide all the essentials for a comfortable holiday. Guests can take advantage of the nightly turndown service. Bathrooms are equipped with a shower, a bathtub and a bidet. For additional convenience, bathrooms also provide a hairdryer. For extra comfort in the bathrooms, guests are offered cosmetic products. Wheelchair-friendly rooms can be booked. The hotel has family rooms and 67 non-smoking rooms. You may be unsurprised to learn there’s a touch of The Grand Budapest Hotel to this one. Hotel founder Howard York, though he sounds an awful lot like an Ayn Rand creation ( i.e. Howard Roark, the architect-hero of The Fountainhead), is most like the Ralph Fiennes character. He uses his influence to finagle anything for a guest; “you could believe, sitting here in his castle, that he really did mean to live a couple of centuries and that everything he had built would still be standing around him.” But even he can’t stop tragedy; a fire at the hotel in the 1980s orphaned and blinded a small boy named Chas, who Howard then adopted. Evening meals were very hit and miss- some nights ok, other nights dreadful. Restaurant manager not particularly friendly. We see changes over the decades, we see stories develop, old secrets unearthed, and society altering around the hotel, which valiantly tries to keep up. I loved how the story develops, how Chas's adolescent then adult narrative complements Graham's as we see the hotel's story from their differing points of view, and their views of the entrepreneur Howard. It's a fascinating, and at times heartbreaking tale.

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Breakfast was ok as long as you only ate the cold food plus toast. The hotel did offer bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs all kept warm using candles!! Inevitably they weren’t warm and very few people eating it- a bit of a clue that the staff and management should really be looking to improve. Poor disabled access with lots of steps at entrance- not an issue for us but certainly something the hotel management should consider.

Watson always has a great style to his novels, a warmness. He makes the reader feel like they know the characters well. The first-person narratives do that effectively and Watson manages to make them feel like two very distinct voices. I think the cleverest thing though is that neither are really the main character- that comes in the form of hotel owner Howard York. It is him that the secrets surround and him that runs the hotel and plays a big hand in running the country. Yet at the same we rarely get up close and personal with him in the story, not really knowing what he is really like until the end. Beautiful grounds, a large swimming pool, a typical restaurant; Hotel Alpha gives you all this and more in peaceful SantAgnello, a 2-minute train ride from the centre of Sorrento. Anyone else who spots something suspicious can always report it to our Customer Service team, so our Fraud team can investigate. Clean and modern rooms on the second floor. Great showers with plenty of hot water and towels changed daily. Sorrento is a heady mix of tourist friendly resort and a still traditional Italian coastal town. It has all the amenities you could wish for, as well as catering for families, couples and the more adventurous. It retains its artisanal crafts, and is filled with small shops specialising in ceramics, limoncello and leather goods. The aromas of fresh pasta, pizza, lemons and tomatoes permeate the air as you stroll around the quaint streets filled with restaurants and cafés.Jamaica Holidays | Jersey Holidays | Kefalonia Holidays | Kos Holidays | Lake Garda Holidays | Lanzarote Holidays | Las Vegas Holidays | Madeira Holidays | Magaluf Holidays | Majorca Holidays | Maldives Holidays | Malta Holidays | Mauritius Holidays | Menorca Holidays | Mexico Holidays | Morocco Holidays | Mykonos Holidays These guidelines and standards aim to keep the content on Booking.com relevant and family-friendly without limiting expression of strong opinions. They are also applicable regardless of the sentiment of the comment.