Surcharges for lots of things, low quality room.
Some good points but many more bad points.
The staff were very pleasant and polite, we can't fault that. The food was mostly very good, as expected seeing as the hotel is owned by Marco Pierre-White, though we know that he doesn't do the cooking himself, it is his team who do all that. The location of the hotel was perfect for what we wanted to do - visit the Roman Bath house in Bath. We were both given a complimentary cocktail on arrival (though this had to be claimed by 5pm on arrival day or you just wouldn't get one). There wasn't any choice of cocktails, you got what you are given. I'm not sure but I think it was a Mimosa as we were just handed it by the barman.... The gardens were typically of a Roman style, not surprising given the location and also MPW's heritage as he is half Italian I believe. They were nice, we sat in them for our arrival cocktail. They were a bit overgrown but we could still sit relatively comfortably at one of the tables.
The food was good, nicely presented and always arrived very hot, and it kept the heat too. The menu was limited though, which we expected as our whole stay was bought through Wowcher and didn't expect the full whack anyway. I had poached egg one morning and part of the egg white was still not quite cooked, I put that bit aside but I'm not sure if I'd already eaten any uncooked egg before I noticed, and strangely enough I had a bad case of sickness and diarrhoea later in the middle of the night. Sides are all at an extra cost, so if, like my husband, you wanted potatoes and veg with your steak you will have to fork out an extra £5 - per side. So it cost an extra £10 just for my husband to have any veg with his steak! The steak itself was excellent, according to my husband. The breakfasts incur the same additional £5 charge if you want fresh orange juice with it, so again another £10 as we both like orange juice with our breakfasts. You do get complimentary tea or coffee with breakfast but neither of us drink that and the waitress looked at us as if we had two heads when we said no thanks to that and asked for some OJ instead. You'd think she would have just replaced the tea/coffee with the orange juice at no extra charge but that didn't happen.The cost of alcoholic drinks was ridiculous too, if you wanted another cocktail aside from your free welcome one it would have cost another £12.50, a bottle of beer is £7.50 and just a diet coke (unsure if it was a can, bottle or even draught - we didn't try to find out) was £4.95!! So if the two of us had wanted to stay in the fig tree garden and just have a few drinks without going elsewhere it could have easily cost us £100, just for one evening's drinks. But if you're thinking "Well we can just go somewhere local, buy a few cans and take them back to the room" - yes you could but if you leave ANY signs such as bottle tops or empty cans, you will get charged £40 corkage. So take any rubbish (food waste too) and put it straight in your car so that room service doesn't find it. Or just ask for no room service that day.
Our room was pretty large and on the ground floor of the separate Treetops building, and it did have a smart TV. The room was dark though, and the lights and lamps weren't quite bright enough. There were two windows which didn't open at all, and two french doors which did open but we actually didn't work this out until the morning we left as when we tried them they were very stiff and we thought they were locked. They opened out on the ground floor right onto the back of the small parking area, so there's no way you could have left them open and gone out for the day like you might have with a window on an upper floor. And you wouldn't want to leave them open at night to get some fresh air when you were in bed, for obvious reasons. So the two night stay wasn't hugely pleasant as we just couldn't ventilate the room. In bed at night, we both found all of the pillows were too soft, and there was no support in them at all. I'd actually recommend people to take their own pillows. Awful. The bed smelt very stale, almost like stale cigarette smoke, though it surely can't have been that. Very unpleasant. The carpets and rugs were threadbare in numerous places, and the rug under the bed was rucked up and wouldn't flatten at the edges. I tripped over it a few times. The bathroom was big and had a huge waterfall shower. The water was hot which was good, but there was no hand soap anywhere so we had to actually use the supplied shampoo to wash our hands with instead. The bathroom ceiling was badly touched up too, and even though there was some kind of a very small fan in the wall I didn't notice it working at any time during our stay, which was a particular problem as we couldn't open any windows in the bedroom either. So many negatives, no room left to write. Just avoid.
August 14, 2024
Unprompted review