The Penta

The Penta takes up two addresses in the long Victorian terrace along Queens Promenade, one of those tall cream-fronted seafront buildings Douglas put up when the town was in the business of holidays. It has kept the scale of that period: deep bay windows, high ceilings and staircases that climb several floors.

You arrive straight off the promenade. The front is stacked bays and white stucco with the hotel name picked out on a canopy above the door, and opposite there is a strip of grass with palm trees on it, then railings, then the sand of Douglas Bay.

Behind the bay windows

The ground floor holds a small reception with fresh flowers on the counter, a lounge where leather chesterfields sit under the window, and a dining room laid up with tables. Corridors are panelled in wood and hung with framed pictures, so the place reads as a house rather than a chain. A lift serves the upper floors, which on a building this tall counts for a lot.

Rooms with the bay in them

No two bedrooms have been done the same way. One has teal curtains against pale walls, another a turquoise feature wall with a painted harbour scene above the bed. Doubles and twins both appear, each with a private bathroom, a kettle and a flat-screen television, and some look straight out over the promenade to the water. Bathrooms range from a granite-topped vanity to a plainly tiled walk-in shower.

The length of the promenade

Douglas Beach is right there, and the promenade itself is the walk: one way towards the headland, the other into the centre of Douglas for the shops, the harbour and somewhere to eat. The sweep of the bay comes with it.

Best suited to

Couples and small groups who want to be on the seafront in the island capital, would rather walk into town than drive, and value a lift and a staffed reception over self-catering independence.