The town is nice, not great for kids with the dangerous pier but nice besides. The hotel is a mix of run-down hostel and self-catering apartments. Not a hotel by any international understanding of the word - reception is manned for seven hours of the day and not consecutively, no restaurant, no bar, no vending machine, no doorman just a code, etc. Definitely not a four star hotel by Irish standards. I have no clue how the hotel got its rating. The reception staff are unusually unwilling to be decent to guests - I was told that bike rental is not 24 hrs but on a calendar day, i.e. rent a bike at 4pm, bring it back at 8pm, nobody on reception, bring it back the next morning, two days. Other bike hires in the town do not operate like that. My wife went to book pastries for our last morning at 6.50pm and was told that the order had been called in at 6.30pm and we missed it. Fair enough if we did, but I would wonder if she could have called to ask if they would take our order. We have two young children so running to the bakery on our last morning wasn't an option. I wouldn't bother with this place - too cold, too uncared-for, a bit like someone has worked out the maximum money from the minimum effort.