I have just returned from a one night stay at Tortworth Court with my boyfriend. We booked the one night spa break which included a 25 minute treatment and breakfast, we also upgraded o a Connoisseur Double room.
I booked the hotel online and the process was very straight forward, during the booking there was a box where you could make any special requests, I requested a room in the main part of the hotel following from reviews I had read on here prior to my visit. Once the booking was complete I received an e-mail suggesting I booked the spa treatments quickly as they did get very busy, I called the following day (this was around 1 month prior to my stay) and there were only two slots available when we could have our treatments at the same time so I would highly recommend booking your treatments early!
On arrival at the hotel the receptionist was really friendly and very welcoming, I explained that I knew check in was not until 4pm however our treatments were at 1:30 so could we use the spa until our room was ready. She was more than happy to help and also checked to see if she could get us into a room earlier, it wasn’t ready then but it was ready by 2pm. Our bags were left at the reception and taken to the room for us and we went into Brunels Bar for a quick drink before going off to off to the spa.
Brunels bar was very reasonably priced, I ordered a cup of tea, an orange juice and a coke and it was around £6, the sofas were really comfy and the staff were welcoming.
We waited at the desk next to the swimming pool for quite a while (around 10 minutes) for anyone to attend to us, I explained we had spa treatments in half an hour but could we use the pool etc in the mean time and the lady there told us this was fine, I asked for our bathrobes and she said they would be in our room but when I said our room wasn’t ready yet she said we would need to wait until our room was ready to collect them. This was a little inconvenient as it meant we had to move between the pool (downstairs) and the sauna and steam rooms (upstairs) and the spa (along a corridor) with just our towels wrapped round us and no slippers, if we’d known this we could have taken our own along but as part of our package it did say these were provided.
The pool area is quite small but more than adequate. There is no designated area for swimming and when I visited there were a lot of families there so it was really difficult to swim up and down due to all the kids playing games and bobbing around on floats, a small area roped off would have been better to allow people that wanted to swim to be able to do so. The Jacuzzi wasn’t very hot but it was comfortable to sit in, there were signs outside saying children under 8 could not use the jaccuzi however when I was there a lady brought her son in (couldn’t have been anymore than 4) he splashed around and climbed over mine and the other lady next to me none of the staff said anything to the lady about this. I wouldn’t have a problem with children in the Jacuzzi, but it didn’t start off my RELAXING spa experience too well!
Peels spa was delightful! We were welcomed by a really lovely lady on reception, given our questionnaire to fill in and offered drinks whilst we waited. I had a “Skin Bliss Body exfoliation” which was fantastic, very relaxing and my skin felt amazing afterwards. My therapist was fantastic too, really friendly. My boyfriend had the “Aroma Back Relief Massage” which he also really enjoyed.
We then returned to reception and was told our room was ready, given our key and directions (make sure you listen to those…the hotel is like a maze!)
Our room (room 37) was beautiful, nice open space with beautiful beams and a fantastic view from huge windows over the gardens. Everything was spotlessly clean and we had plenty of towels, our bags had been placed in our room for us, unfortunately our dressing gowns hadn’t and it seemed a bit redundant asking for them at that point as the spa part of our break when we actually needed them was over!
We ordered some lunch on room service, I had a ham and tomato baguette and my boyfriend a steak baguette, they were delicious, delivered to the room promptly even though when we called to order we had been told it could be up to 40 minutes, it was probably only about 15! The baguettes were freshly cooked and warm and the meat in both was delicious.
We hadn’t booked our spa deal with dinner included as we weren’t sure if we wanted to eat there or find a restaurant elsewhere and at about 4pm we decided to book dinner in the restaurant, the lady when we checked in had advised us to book early if we did decide we wanted to as it got full up quickly, we were only able to get a booking for 9pm, not to bad as we’d had a large lunch fairly late anyway.
We arrived at Moretons Restaurant at 8:40pm, we honestly hadn’t realised how early we had arrived, the maître d (Frank I believe) was very rude and instead of saying you’re a little early would you like to wait in the bar or something like that he just said “I cannot seat you, your reservation is not til 9pm” and then completely ignored us and started talking to the people behind us in the queue. We went off and had some drinks in Brunels bar, in hindsight we should have ordered a light meal and stayed in there as it would have been a much more pleasant evening!
We returned to “Frank” at 9pm…not a minute before! He was using the computer and ignored us for a while, then walked off, then came back muttered something about “not keeping us” and wandered off again finally returning about 10 minutes later, walked us through to a table towards the back wall of the library, immediately when we sat down there was a freezing cold breeze pumping through a huge vent in the floor, right under our table, we asked to move tables which seemed like a huge inconvenience to Frank and he ushered us to another table, asked is if we had eaten there before (we hadn’t) pointed at the bottom of the menu where the prices were and walked off. During the time we were there a further 5 couples were sat at the 3 tables over this air vent and all 3 asked to move, another couple had taken books off the library wall to cover the vent over as they didn’t want to cause a fuss asking to move! Having not been in there until 9pm and the restaurant being open from 6pm it did make me wonder how many people they had seated there throughout the night, how many had complained and how many times they thought they would just try and put another poor couple there and hope they didn’t say anything.
I then noticed that every table other than ours were served some crusty bread and a bottle of water, this wasn’t offered to us and I ordered an appetiser of rustic bread and this was different to what all these other tables got so I’m unsure as to why this was not given to us as it was to everyone else.
We were not seen to by any waiter or waitress for around 15 minutes, even to order a drink, it would have been nice to have been able to order our appetisers for whilst we looked through the menu but no staff came anywhere near for us to be able to do that.
When the waitress (Daniela) finally came over, she was really unhelpful, the menu showed what each dish was served with apart from the butterfly chicken breast, I asked what it came with, and she said she didn’t know, she didn’t offer to find out for me and when I asked her to she just said I could have either mash or chips, I opted for chips and when the dish came up it was then served with chips and vegetables! Had I know it was served with veg I would have opted for mash.
My appetiser of rustic bread with balsamic vinegar olive oil dips was served with no oil or dip, it took me around 5 minutes to get the attention of a passing waiter and ask for this, no apology was made she just said “I get for you” The oil and vinegar was in one pot, it obviously doesn’t mix the vinegar had sunk to the bottom and all you got when dipping was a mouthful of oil and the layer of that was so thick on top of the vinegar.
Our starters arrived before we had finished our appetisers but the man that brought them out clearly had no intention of returning to the kitchen with them and asked me to move my plate so he could put them down!
For my started I had Sautéed wild mushrooms on toasted brioche which although cold was still tasty, had I been able to find any staff I would have sent this back due to the temperature but being so hungry by the time I had actually seen anyone I had already eaten most of it so I didn’t mention it. My boyfriend had the Chicken liver parfait with red onion marmalade, there was no onion marmalade served with this which to us didn’t matter as he doesn’t eat it anyway but had I ordered that I’d have been really annoyed as that’s my favourite bit!
For mains we both had the butterfly chicken breast as mentioned above, the chicken was dry and the presentation of the food was very poor.
Midway through our meal we wanted to order some more drinks, our waitress was standing in the corner of the room chatting to another waitress I made eye contacted with them several times, waved once and held up my glass to try and indicate I wanted them to come over and they completely ignored me and at this point we decided not to bother with any more drinks or dessert.
The people on the table behind us were also making a complaint about the service, the way the waiters and waitresses seemed to be spending more time running around not really doing anything than actually spending time helping their guests. I decided not to complain whilst in the restaurant and am going to be writing a letter to Four Pillars instead as I feel that the complaints I heard being made by other people (especially about sitting over the vents) were falling on deaf ears. Especially after seeing multiple people sat in the same seat, complaining about it, being moved and then someone else being put there, this clearly wasn’t rectifying a problem it was just passing it on to someone else!
The restaurant was fairly busy but absolutely not busy enough to warrant the staff being so unattentive and no matter how busy there is never an excuse for the plain rudeness from the maître d!
It’s such a shame the evening meal was so bad as in the morning the service in the restaurant was much better, the lady that showed us to our table was friendly and helpful, she explained all about the breakfast and then let us help ourselves, amazing how people that all work in the same area of the hotel can be so different! However once again tables had been set over the air vents, no one was sat at them whilst we were there although we did get there early and I imagine they would be later when it got busier.
Check out was really efficient, a copy of our invoice was posted through our door during the night and we signed this and left it at the reception along with the key, there wasn’t a queue for checkout and we could have seen the receptionist if we wanted to but apparently it does get busier later in the day.
Overall
We had a really lovely time in this hotel, the rooms, spa facilities, treatments, room service breakfast and most of the staff were are fantastic, its just such a shame that the staff in the restaurant that evening were so rude and unhelpful, customer service was clearly not their strong point! Thankfully this didn’t ruin our weekend, and I would still highly recommend the hotel, in fact we are already thinking about going back again just next time I would order room service or have a light meal in the bar rather than bothering with the restaurant.
Room Tip: We stayed in Room 37 which was lovely. I have seen a few reviews about the rooms being cold, they ar...
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
