Our many visits to Spencer House Inn go back 25 years or more. We were always thrilled with its cleanliness, the quality of the breakfasts, and the general efficiency of the place; and of course its location is ideal: It's the gateway to Cumberland Island, and the town is sweet, with a good bookstore, a wonderful historic house museum, and a couple of nice restaurants. Over the years we have given Spencer House Inn 5-star Trip Advisor reviews. The location has not changed. The antique furniture and lamps, thankfully, have not changed. Sadly, other things have. The new owners -- evidently a corporate entity, Brham -- seem to run the place on a shoestring, and pretentiously: The offer of champagne upon arrival, which we refused, is less important than cleanliness and structural integrity. I hadn't set out to find fault, but the dirty bath mat with scuff marks and a large, circular yellow stain was the first alarm, along with, we saw, sheets stained pink in two spots. Is no one monitoring what goes in and out of the laundering service? Or even looking at the sheets when making the bed? General cleaning, too, was minimal: beneath our bed was an old candy, where the floors meet the baseboards was dusty, and in the cupboard was hanging what looked like a used hydration bag. While the first floor had received a paint job since we last visited, it was badly done, with smears of wall color on the ceiling. Really. A world-wide corporation cannot do better? The second-floor porch is a mess, with a rotting column among other troubles, now is the season to be working on it, but there's no sign of ongoing work. We had been looking forward to sitting on it as usual with our cousins, who had also rented a room, but it was off limits. We all would have understood had there been construction tools and wood lying around on it, but that wasn't the case. A world-wide corporation can't get a repair going? The two young women we met were helpful, pleasant and seemed to be working very hard within the confines of corporate strictures; what the place needs is an eagle-eyed manager like the previous owner, Mary, who really ran it, and money which Brham evidently is not spending. We had expected we would, this time, find Spencer House Inn better than ever, that new owners would shine it up. It was not the case."Brham" has done the Spencer House Inn no favors.
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