I stayed here with a friend who has booked a weekend away as a surprise. I guess I shouldn't compain because I didn't pay but it was a horrible place to stay.

The whole house is VERY worn and tired and really old fashioned, it is like going to a bed and breakfast in 1978. We went down to breakfast one day to see the owner's dog helping itself to food that had been left out on a plate, glad we noticed otherwise we might have been eating it ourselves a minute later.

To be honest I would have rather paid half and stayed somewhere nice, being in such a depressing atmosphere slightly ruined the weekend. If you go away you want to be able to relax and we simply couldn't.

having been looking for a gay place in Bournemouth for ages, I googled and found the bondi at www.thebondi.co.uk it is probably the most eye catching gay hotel site I have ever seen!!!

I found it to be clean, tidy, very friendly and just like home. Unlike the last review, I found the ornaments added something nice to the place and make it interesting.

The owners are really lovely people and make one feel extremely welcome. The room was very comfortable, ok not up to The Ritz in London, but it is a small victorian terrace in Bournemouth for chrissakes.

It is clean, very tidy, and a lovely place to stay overall. I will go again definitely.

I suspect that the previous reviewer is malicious in intent and probably has never been there.

harry
X (one for Harley x)

I am lucky enough to travel quite a bit both privately and with my job so see lots of levels of hotel and guest house all over the world from the best 5 star in the world to rather very basic depending on my budget. I can find kind words about most places always taking into account how much I have paid, see my other reviews. However this is perhaps the worst lodging I have stayed in for a good 20 years. I expected little and got even less.

I got there with a friend who was sharing my room, I had paid just £45 a night and was told that adding another guest would be £10 more a night. When I got there they changed the price to be £20 more a night. Kind of okay I guess, it is still not much to pay to stay somewhere.

However everywhere seems mucky and in need of a paint. Yes there is the fabled complete rebuild of the hotel sometime in the future but it is not good enough now to have bare wires from a lamp taped together under a carpet. The room is small and cramped, the bathroom has a shower power switch on the floor (?). The shower in the room would not produce hot water and I was told "Turn it to the other way you would expect and it works" and indeed on a cold setting it does get hot eventually. We used the couple of towels we had given and they were soaking so the next day we left them on the bathroom floor to be changed (hopefully for bigger actual bath towels) and when we got back the soaking wet ones had just been rehung up for more use !!

The whole place feels grotty, cluttered with hundreds of little ornaments (a skull with a snake coming out of its eye, that kind of thing) and their dog more or less lives in the kitchen. In the breakfast room there is a sign that might seem amusing elsewhere "If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen". This summed up the attitude of the owners, breakfast is continental (which can be great) but here is a few croissants and plastic wrapped cheese, make your own tea with a hot water urn, jug of orange juice. You just feel like they make little effort with the breakfast, certainly not worth getting out of bed for.

Overall avoid avoid avoid until they do rebuild completely, the guys there are nice enough and might make a fantastic job if it. However at the moment there are PLENTY of much nicer places to stay for the same money or even much less.

I stayed at The Bondi for a long weekend in January after seeing their website. I have to say that I was impressed by the lovely homely atmosphere of the place. The owner, Jan and her partner, made me and my friend feel so welcome! We had tea and biscuits on arrival and had a lovely chat with them. She explained that she had only bought the business a month or so before and that she had plans to restore and refurbish it. The builders were discreetly at work outside and in, but were not intrusive in any way. I was impressed by her plans and her vision to make the Bondi a great gay hotel again.

The rooms are not on a grand scale, but Jan says the building dates back to Victorian times. The rooms are comfortable, clean and tidy and that for me is what counts.

They now serve a continental buffet style breakfast and you can eat and drink as much as you want, which pleased the great bear of a partner of mine. I had toast, cereal, grapefruit and 2 delicious croissant warmed in the flashiest toaster ever!

All in all, I would say give this place a go. You won't find a friendlier place to stay and now that Jan is in control, expect vast improvements.