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Hotel Class: 
4 Stars - 3 Reviews and 602 Opinions
Regent Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 1AD, United Kingdom
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of people enjoy staying here
605 Opinions
sourbugger
User Rating
Don't be put off by the first view of this hotel. If HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and customs) was given the contract to design a hotel then this is what they would come up with. It looks like it should home middle ranking bureaucrats going about thge sould destroying tedious lives. The dirty great car park hiding the entrance doesn't help either.
On the plus side the inside is well maintained if rather boringly traditional. I did however quite like the reproduction of a drawing showing the party put on by Cambridge to mark the coronation of the queen (Victoria rather than Elizabeth of course). This event took place on Parker's piece (public park) into a corner of which the hotel was built. Looking out over this public space whilst taking breakfast really lmproves the whole ambience. Football was invented on that piece of turf (see another tip) whilst nowdays its a short cut for the cycling student hoardes and an informal practice area for sports teams.
Rooms are traditional, no great surprises but no horrors either.
Unique Quality: Plenty of 'establishment' touches around the place with rooms after the great and the good of English history (although good in this context usually means thrashing the froggies in battle). I noticed that the 'churchill' room was labelled with a series of inspiring quotes from the great man (and he only thrashed the bosh rather than the garlic eaters). Please excuse the casual racism but staying here for three nights brought it on...now wheres the Daily Teelgraph gone ?
There's something oh so english about the place that must attract european visitors in the summer. Could it be the odd eccentricity such as a breakfast item labelled 'Boiled eggs with soilders'. If you don't know what they are then clearly you must be suspect. Tally ho. SB
SallyM
User Rating
Helpfulness
This hotel is a nice old building with what looks like a 1960s car park stuck on the back. My room was in the car park part. It was comfortable enough, with all mod-cons (including TV, free internet access, tea-making facilities with biscuits, bathroom with L'Occitane toiletries and very fluffy towels, trouser press and iron and ironing board) but a bit small for the price (£155 per night bed and breakfast).
It is well-located within easy walking distance of the city centre, and has (limited) parking facilities (£12 per day).
Unique Quality: Breakfast is served in the ballroom, with views over Parker's Piece. Try to get a window table.
De Vere University Arms Hotel Photo: University Arms Cambridge
josephescu
User Rating
Helpfulness
Breakfast and newspapers in bed, afternoon coffee in typicall red leather sofa in the saloon. All that was missing for a trip back in time...... was a Churchill's cigar and the titles in the newspapers.
Besides, it seemed to me they traditionally hire students to do the cleaning/serve in the restaurant. So don't get cocky and let small details spoil your stay, but think that you're helping someone pay his/her tuition.
Unique Quality: It worths all the money, but ask for a room with a view, in the old wing.
De Vere University Arms Hotel
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The University Arms Hotel is one of the oldest hotel in town, I am not going through the details of this hotel accommodation characteristics as I never stayed there but building itself is very elegant.
The beautiful view of Parker’s piece makes it perfect.
We are very pleased with our stay at University Arms hotel 16-18 April.
We got a huge room with view over the park area, with a small balcony. It is an ancient hotel and naturally you can´t expect everything to be ultramodern. But the staff is very polite and attentive,
the breakfast in the impressive Ballroom, was fabulous.
We will return!
We chose to use this hotel because of its convenient location in the town centre. However, at £90 for one night it's not exactly cheap, and the state of the room was inexcusably poor for a hotel supposedly in this league.
One of the electrical sockets fizzed when you plugged anything into it, the sink in the bathroom was cracked, and the fixtures and fittings in the bathroom had dirt rings around them - it looked like it had needed rennovating for the last 2-3 years! Also, my wife had to wait for 3 minutes for hot water in the shower. One minute per star perhaps? ;o)
On the plus side, the breakfast was very good (although table cloths were dirty), there was a very wide choice of items, and the view from the ballroom where they serve it was good. There's also a very quaint original lift from the early 1900's which most people will probably find interesting to use (especially the tourists).
To sum up, I'd stay here again, but I'd only be willing to pay around £65 per night for the privelege; I feel the hotel are relying on their location to keep the price of rooms artificially high.
No heating in room. Could not get heating to work, made worse by bathroom extraction fan on all the time so pulling cold air through the room. Also no shower curtain in bathroom. Reception reacted slowly to send someone to investigate. Had to call through to reception twice. Eventually someone came with an oil heater (for our convenience!) while they fiddled with air/con heating arrangement that seemed to have detached itself from wall, and having been badly repaired was now standing on wooden unpainted legs. After twenty minutes in freezing room we rang reception again and insisted they move us to another room. They did this and the room was warm. We had booked the hotel at the last minute through internet and paid for room in advance, at checkout next morning receptionist was confused by this and tried to insist we had not paid asking several people behind the scenes in a loud voice if it was possible to do this, what an insult! Oh dear, remember this is a four star hotel in centre of Cambridge. Come on De Vere you can do better!
We booked a king room on a special deal. Whilst the room we were given was very nice, half the lights didn't work and the heater had been disconnected. We were moved quickly, but to a double, the booking didn't show that we had a king. This then caused some consternation as the only remaining available king rooms were above the function room, with a party planned for that evening. We took one of these anyway. The room was obviously a smoking one (we had requested non smoking), and one of the windows was borded up. The extractor fan in the bathroom was extremely load, meaning you were guaranteed to wake your partner if using the bathroom during the night.
Despite these problems, the hotel staff were extremely attentive and helpful and they did give us one days free parking. The room was comfortable and we weren't disturbed by the party.
The hotel is impressive and extremely well located. The restaurant served excellant food.
Shame that the hotel bar was thick with smoke, some ventilation would be a good idea.
Overall, a little disappointing for a 5* hotel in the De Vere Group
Looking for a central Cambridge hotel I searched the reviews on tripadvisor. Even the top choices are damned with faint praise, or worse.
Then I came to the De Vere UA: # 46 a the time - De Vere are a good chain - yet still it had been panned. Normally, I wouldn't have bothered with something that TA members had condemned, but needed some where.
I stayed there last week and have to say that the staff were extremely helpful and polite, the room was clean, quiet, reasonably spacious and recently redecorated. The bathroom was huge and clean, the breakfast excellent. A double room for two on a friday night including breakfast was £95, given the relative lateness of my booking, this was fair value.
In all, my experience was much better than the majority of other TA members - I assume the hotel has improved its act.
What should you expect from a hotel that charges just over £100 per night b and b? I find more and more what I am getting is faded glory, chipped paint and tired rooms and a definite feeling that I am not getting value for money.
The University Arms in Cambridge is exactly that. Obviously had its good times but now showing a lack of investment and care and concentrating only on where it makes money - fast turnover and functions.
Rooms need sprucing up as decor is very old fashioned; chipped paintwork needs tender loving care. Our bathroom (in an executive double) had grubby grout, old-fashioned lino floors, a toilet which took 5 attempts to flush. Furniture in the room was strangely placed: a wardrobe hiding the main light swich needed only to have been exchanged with a smaller piece of furniture on the opposite wall to sort out what should have been an obvious problem but no-one had thought about it orl if they had, hadn't cared enough to sort it out.
Things need the attention of a manager who is on the ball. We left our room at 10 am and when we got back it had not been cleaned. By the time the cleaner came it was 4.40 pm and we told him to leave it as we had just settled down after a long day. Cleaners are all foreign and understand very little English so it was difficult to draw their attention to our annoyance at this poor service.
The main lobby had a couple of empty plastic paint pots catching drips from a leak in the ceiling which didn't set a good tone from the start.
Breakfast: average. What was not average was that they played Radio 2 at top volume. When we complained about the noise we were told "the manager says the guests prefer it to being quiet". One look around the room showed people mostly about our age (50s and 60s), many foreign and probably to polite to complain. Interestingly by day 3 (the final day or our stay) the music had gone and peace and quiet reigned.
A hotel run with minimum attention to detail and it shows
This hotel might be a little pricey, but our experience was really good. The room was large, and had a great four-poster canopy bed which was the most comfortable hotel bed I can remember . Everything worked (lamps, internet connection, etc.) and everything was clean. Nice big bathroom, and we had an enjoyable view overlooking Parker's Piece, a famous and well-used Cambridge greenspace. Ask for a room overlooking it if you're going to stay here.
The breakfast was quite good, and we didn't eat at the hotel restaurant for dinner, but had two great meals within a block or two of the hotel. Very good central-city location, easy to walk anywhere from the hotel.
The hotel bar, Parker's Pub, was quite nice, and we enjoyed afternoon tea there, and drinks in the evening. Tea was very good at a reasonable cost, drinks about average cost, but in nice cushy leather chairs, again with big windows looking out over Parker's Piece.
The second night, the barman was a little lacking in understanding good service, but everyone else at the hotel was quite nice.
It worths all the money, but ask for a room with a view, in the old wing.
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Address: Regent Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 1AD, United Kingdom
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