Beaverbrook, The Orangery

We returned after coming to stay in 2018, and having a great memory of the hotel. Sadly, while on paper facilities have improved, the quality of the service and food has gone down tremendously, and it is not worth the price at all. We dined at the Garden House Restaurant on Friday 14th. The food was underwhelming, featuring a sticky pasta dish and overcooked fish - my husband was sick throughout the entire night. The Japanese restaurant the next day was even worse. I booked the table for a special occasion (my husband's birthday) over a month ago, and upon arrival we were told our table was not ready, and it was going to take "as long as people needed to finish their pudding". The alternative to such table was being squeezed behind a door, so I did decline the offer. 15 minutes later we were offered our table, I was asked whether I wanted to hang my jacket, which was then collected to be thrown on a chair nearby, and consequently fell on the floor. The food is extremely overpriced and favour-less, and caused both myself and my husband stomach ache throughout the entire night. Food aside, we were very excited to try the spa facilities, which turned out to be another disappointment. Rather than a relaxing space, they give the feeling of a busy airport lounge, with bright led lights, loud people everywhere, and little space to relax. Finally, it was very clear that 99% of the staff employed looked extremely sad to be there, with long faces, looking absent, and barely acknowledging your presence. An example of this was our check-out, when the Front Desk agent barely looked me in the eye, reciting the different steps she had been taught to, and not picking up on 1) my request to be given the management's email address as I wanted to leave a review, and 2) the fact that we did not have such a wonderful stay after all. Finally, we surely had a beautiful room, however the bed turned out to be quite uncomfortable, and we gave up on the golf cart service to go anywhere, as reception was quite difficult to reach in the first place to book one. If you call yourself a 5 start hotel, you should act like one. You can then earn the prices you request people to pay.

Do not stay here ! This has been an incredibly poor experience with Beaverbrook hotel. I'll provide a detailed summary below Number one when I booked the hotel the two nights with my daughters they took payment three times from my debit card and none of these went through and was shown as pending on my account. As a result a very large sum of money was held on my account and I couldn't get this money back onto my account for over a week and as a result I missed my mortgage payment and as such this reflects on your credit rating. No one in the senior management got back to me about this I should have trusted my instincts and not stayed at the hotel although I continued with my booking and when we arrived at the hotel the first day in our room the heating wasn't working at all. Its done by under floor heating and the temperature didn't get above 16° and as such the room was really cold and I ended up with a fever and was really sick and had to go home the next day. I asked the hotel to credit one night of my stay due to the fact that the heating wasn't working in the bedroom and they refused to do this I then arrived home and on the next day to my dismay they had taken nearly £900 out of my account with no e-mail no phone call no justification for this not even a phone call does ask me how I am and how I'm feeling. It turns out that overcharging by nearly £400. The remaining amount was for a number of meals we had at the hotel during our limited stay. It then took nearly two weeks after chasing multiple times to get the money refunded which they overcharged me for. This has to be the worst five star experience I've ever had with any hotel and even if these even if these occurrence in occurrences hadn't have happened I can let you let you know that the quality of the offering there is poor. Depending on where you're staying you have breakfast in different areas and you are not allowed within the breakfast rate to dine in other areas only in the area that's designated for you. Upon having breakfast in the garden area taken there in the cart by Jose (Jose who is the warmest and very nice out of all the staff working there the rest of staff don't make any eye contact on our incredibly cold that sort of traditional British coldness we've become accustomed to and lack of warmth we've come to class as normal in the UK) there was no one to greet us, and Jose had to look around for a member of staff to seat us. This whole breakfast experience is very poor constantly asking for coffee and to be served in a timely way. It could be quite clearly seen that the male member of staff was not happy working there and the most the work was being delegated to a young lady but it was but was woefully understaffed. Lunch at Mrs beeton's was passable with the staffing better but their their rendition of kedgeree really was quite awful it was basically boiled rice with some vegetables and fish added in with no attention to spicing and was really poor I can tell you that as I make it with regularity at home. Our experience at the Japanese restaurant was better although it is incredibly expensive not least many of the wines are available by via Coravin I had one glass of Rioja which is priced at £60 per glass, to my dismay upon looking this bottle up a single bottle retails at £50 so the markup on this is 1000%! This is totally unacceptable and really is a form of extortion for guests. So as the reader can see, all in all a pretty dire experience at Beaverbrook from the senior management downwards. The only interest they seem to have here is taking your money and a complete lack of customer service and warmth for less money and far better service which for me is unparalleled in the UK go to Heckfield place where I've been twice and also the Newt is a reasonably close second.