Pembrokeshire Hotels

More About Pembrokeshire Hotels

Tenby is in the south, and Fishguard sits at the north end of the county, where the ferry crosses twice a day to Rosslare in Ireland. Out west lies St Davids, the smallest city in Britain, and Newport under the Preseli Hills.

Each town makes a different base for hotels in Pembrokeshire. Tenby and Saundersfoot stay busy into the evening; St Davids, Newport and the Gwaun Valley are quieter, and closer to the wilder north.

Where the hotels came from

Pembroke Dock got its hotels because of the boats to Ireland. The mail packet ran from the county’s southern shore, and the lack of hotels was a particular problem for its passengers. Pier House at Pembroke Dock was built as a hotel in 1834, when the boats left from Hobbs Point nearby. It still stands.

Older still are the coaching inns. The Old King’s Arms in Pembroke has deeds back to the fifteen-twenties and still takes guests, seventeen rooms behind a Georgian front. The Lion, up the same street, was a posting house catalogued in 1857 with thirteen bedrooms and stabling for a coach and four.

The grandest of all Pembrokeshire hotels was the Lord Nelson at Milford Haven, named for the admiral who came to see the new naval town in 1802.

Only one grand railway hotel was ever built here: the Fishguard Bay Hotel above Goodwick. It has been shut since 2020, so it is a listed building to look up at rather than anywhere to book.

A hard century and a dry Sunday

The trade has had a hard century since. More than forty hotels inside the national park have become flats since 1990, so the park now protects the ones still trading. Under a planning rule called Policy 39 an owner cannot convert one without proving it no longer works as a hotel. That is why the seafront in Tenby still looks the way it does.

One local quirk lingered longest. Pembrokeshire voted to stay dry on Sundays in 1961, so on a Sunday hotels in Pembrokeshire could serve drinks only to travellers passing through, until the county voted wet again in 1968.

Today the choice among Pembrokeshire hotels runs from grand seafront rooms at Tenby to a country inn up a lane near St Davids or Newport. A few have opened against the run of the years, among them St Brides Spa Hotel above Saundersfoot harbour, which was shortlisted for the 2026 Croeso awards. Most come with a restaurant and a bar for the evening.

A hotel makes an easy base because the county is small. From almost any of them the Coast Path, a beach and a castle are inside half an hour. Whoever is on the desk will know what the tide and the weather are doing tomorrow.

The best of them put the coast right outside your door. Some look straight over a beach, and others sit a lane’s walk from the sand or a few minutes from the ferry at Fishguard. You can walk in off the Coast Path and still find dinner waiting.