The simplest way to put this is that the Spa is lovely and the hotel for its cost is pretty poor. First impressions were good, the Hotel and Spa are lovely from the outside. There grounds are delightful and it is well positioned to get anywhere in the New Forest. We were shown to our room by the lovely receptionist and it was quite nice, the interior of the hotel is worn and the updates are cheaply done and not in keeping with the building which is beautiful.
The Spa itself is lovely and I'd recommend someone taking a day trip although there were a number of children there which might bother some people though not us. We had three treatments which were very pleasant before we had a swim, sauna and sat in the outside hot tub admiring the view.
What is the problem then? Well if anyone has watched 'the hotel' on channel 4 you'll know.
throughout the visit we could not get anyone to answer the phone, on one occasion I had to ring the external line to order breakfast (for which they tried to charge £5.10 until I refused). Before dinner the receptionist screamed at the maitre d from behind the desk until she realised he was serving me, only for them to have a heated discussion only metres away.
Dinner was included and there were three people waiting on around around 8 covers. None of the three knew a thing about the menu which was a odd selection of dishes. Annoyingly the tried to blag it and were hopelessly wrong. The two main male 'waiters' were terrible, while the sole female waiter was lovely but very nervous (presumably given her training from the other two).
Disaster followed disaster, the food was pretty ordinary, when we asked for 10 mins before they gave us the desert menu, they completely forgot! this was ridiculous given we were the only people left in the restaurant and we waited 30 mins before one of the three bothered to come back in and asked whether we were done!
In the morning the waitress who we did like smashed the plate while lifting off the plate cover, horrified she through it across the room only to disappear and re-emerge with the same food on different plates. Saying this she was clearly the junior staff member, very pleasant, hugely apologetic and just needs some training in the right environment.
At checkout we were over charged by around £150, it took about half an hour to sort out and 4-5 attempts. luckily it was the morning receptionist who again was nice and slightly embarrassed.
Given we spent over £500 for one night (albeit with 3 treatments) I expect an awful lot more from a hotel and by the end we just wanted to leave and couldn't be bothered to complain. The Spa saves this rating but for the amount we paid for the room and the food this was woefully below the standard we would expect.
Frustratingly, this place has real potential but needs considerable investment in the décor and particularly staff training
- Country Hotel Brockenhurst
- Country Hotel New Park Manor
