Anyone do New England with the Travel Dept?

I have friends who are heading to New England with the Travel Department in a couple of weeks. They don't fancy eating in the hotels that are booked for them so are looking for some personal recommendations for restaurants (and places to see). They are staying in 1.the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel in Marlborough Boston 2. Bethel Inn, Maine and 3. Basin Harbor Hotel Vermont. Anyone got any reccomendations for places to eat, things to do near these hotels/locations? Thanks.

The Marlborough Hotel is a dump. My wife got food poisoning from their restaurant and suffered very badly on the next days trip to Cape Cod. We spent time searching out a chemist in Chatam where we had a stop for an hour. A few Immodium and thankfully she recovered quickly. The Marlborough Hotel is located beside a small shopping centre. There is a restaurant there where some of the people on our trip ate and were very satisfied. Can't remember the name but it is the main restaurant in the mall. There is nothing else in the area.
When staying in the Bethel Inn we ate in their restaurant. The food was O.K. A few people ate in a small restaurant across the road, situated in what looked like someones home. Those that did said it was great fun and the food was good. A tip here. When in the Bethel Inn try and get one of the one bedroomed apartments to the rear of the hotel. The standard of rooms goes from basic to quite nice and on our trip some people were unlucky. We were lucky here. They have the heat turned up to an unbearably high temperature in both the hotel and restaurant. I had to go for a walk outdoors during the meal as it was so hot. Bethel is really made up of just one main street with little to see.
They dropped the hotel that we used on our trip The "Inn at Stratton Mountain". Good fun to read the Tripadvisor reviews on this one so I can't help here.

I think there are some old threads on that particular tour here on AAM - not all of them favourable, I'm afraid!

gipimann said:

I think there are some old threads on that particular tour here on AAM - not all of them favourable, I'm afraid!

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I cannot understand why The Travel Department still use this hotel. You lose hours every day travelling to and from it.

Oh dear...not great reviews at all and from what I read it doesn't look like going off and doing your own thing is possible as they seem a bit remote. Thanks for the replies.

I did this tour with the travel department four years ago and it was not memorable for the hotels used. The Best Western is in Maryborough 40 kms outside Boston and as previously said a lot of time wasted driving in and out. Surely they should get a hotel in Boston. Not much in Maryborough but eat at the Longhorn restaurant, not the hotel. This hotel would be 2* in Ireland. The second hotel used Bethel inn is only okay. Bethel is nothing more than a village where you spend a day with nothing to do. We were unfortunate in getting a room in the hotel - it was very basic. Some of the group got lovely apartments. The third hotel we used, Stratton Inn, as stated by previous post, is not used now. Gosh this was a disaster. The courier we had was very poor but the driver was very good. The trips are very nice. Enjoy your holiday and let us know what you think.

Thanks for this. Just wondering if those who have been could answer this for me...How far is Marlborough from the hotel? There seems to be a few restaurants there...would it be a quick taxi ride? Tried to contact the hotel but can't get a response. Thanks.

The hotel is in Marlborough. As stated Marlborough is small - really a small shopping centre, a supermarket, a discount store, a supermarket, a chinese restaurant, a McDonalds and as stated the recommended Longhorn restaurant.

Don't remind me about the courier. On our trip she fell asleep on one of the days. On another day as we were heading to Newport Rhode Island she spent the entire trip reading the newspaper. The passengers knew more about the sights than she did. We visited The Norman Rockwell Museum where coach tours got a group discount. She never bothered to get off the coach to bring the group to the ticket desk, she just pointed us to the front door.
I contacted the company that organised the ground tour last year only to be told that she is still doing their tours and is one of their best couriers.

Just another query Oldtimer...I've found a list of restaurants supposedly in Marlborough...Pakistani, Thai, Italian to name a few (there were about 10 on the list). Are you saying then that they are not in Marlborough itself? Or do you reckon they might be nearby (i.e a short taxi journey from the hotel?).

I agree with SlurrySlump, the same thing happened with me as well, I dont know, why people use that. I know a site which can help to book hotels rooms online.

bookhotelrooms.com

Hello, Gina from The Travel Department here.



Hope you don’t mind us joining in the discussion on the Boston trip? Just wanted to address the feedback on hotels we use in Boston as part of the New England in the Fall Tour.


We handpick our hotels based on a number of criteria including customer value for money and the hotel’s convenience to the various tours. To be honest we did look at selecting a hotel in Boston City Centre but felt strongly that the tour group would have to spend a lot of time commuting in and out of Boston City Centre each day (on our tours to Cape Cod , Rhode Island etc). We believe that this would have added a long time to each tour and taken away from the tour experience.


So convenience was a big factor in selecting our hotels in Boston, but we also believe that they provide several other positive features including sizable rooms and good breakfasts.


As always, we listen really carefully to feedback from customers and value your comments. Hope this helps explain why we offer this hotel. If you want to contact me directly you can email me at ginap@thetraveldepartment.ie . You can also speak to any of our customer relations team at 01 637 1600.


All the best! Gina, The Travel Department

Gosh, in all the time I had a travel agency I never mentioned my company's name or location in any post. I thought that would be too obtrusive a type of advertising , which -I had believed - was not allowed on this site.
Silly me !

Well when I travelled on this trip I couldn't understand why we could not have stayed in a hotel in Cape Cod when we were visiting Cape Code and Rhode island. On our long trip frm Marlborough to Cape Cod we ended up getting one hour in Chatham, we had to include our lunch in this stop. Our trip to Provincetown was cancelled because of time restraints. We then had to speed toward Hyannis which was closing up for the day and out to the Kennedy memorial where we were left to wander around for about 40 minutes. This is effectively a wall with a rose bed in front of it. Dreadful altogether. I could say that I never really saw Cape Cod. Then the long trip back to Marlborough.
I will remember this trip for the length of time we spent in the coach speeding from A to B which were effectively toilet stops. It could have been organised so much better and made more enjoyable for everyone with a bit of thought.

@lou2: so have your friends been on the trip? are they back? what was their experience like in comparison to some of the posts on this thread?

Yes they are back. Overall, their review of the holiday was positive. They enjoyed it very much. However, they were very disappointed with Marlborough as they said that it was essentially in the middle of no-where. Far too long in the coach to get back from trips. They can't understand why Marlborough was chosen as a centre by The Travel Department. To hear that the hotel is 'handpicked' is a bit worrying! Also they were disappointed that they were not brought to the JFK library. Apparently most of the bus wanted to see this but for some reason it wasn't on the tour. But as BoxtheFox said the Kennedy memorial (a wall essentially) was on the tour. Also, they complained that they were in a lovely town with really quirky shops etc but they only had one hour there and that had to include getting a meal. Perhaps this was Chatham as BoxtheFox highlighted. The rest of their group also had the same complaints. But as I said overall they enjoyed the trip and the other two hotels/areas were much nicer. Get rid of Marlborough Gina!

Well, I wrote and told them about our negative experiences and so did others on our trip. Unfortunately it seems that The Travel Department is not doing this.

As always, we listen really carefully to feedback from customers and value your comments

This is the company that The Travel Department uses to organise it's tours in the U.S.
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