The Wood Norton

Great Location anyone seen a manager

Great building so badly let down by the total lack of management.
Check in ok
Room 205 house keeping need to look above head there heads .
There was a lot of cobwebs in both the bedroom and the bathroom.
Carpet dusty in the corners.
Dinner 1st night I asked for the bread selection from the nibbles section. 20minutes I had to ask for the bread the selection was 3 slices of white bread leftover from breakfast no butter was offered.
When the butter did arrive it was not on a plate just dropped onto the table.
The meal was ok.
Breakfast over cooked I judge a breakfast on the sausage could not do this as it was over cooked.
I asked for more toast . When it arrive it was placed on top of my side plate and the butter I had opened for the toast.
Dinner day 2 stayed clear of the massive bread section.
Dinner was ok steaks not great.
Breakfast much as the day before.
Check out
Having pre paid I thought all I had to pay was my bar bill.WRONG. My wife went to pay was presented a bill for the total stay .
The receptionist was arrogant and insisted we had not paid anything.
I had to go back to my car and get the receipt I had printed out before we left home.

I know times are difficult within the hospitality industry with getting and keeping good staff.
That doesn t stop the management training the staff they have.
At no time during our stay did we see a manager on duty the staff did there best. On our 2nd night our waiter was 16 years old. What a great lad if I was still running Restaurants I would train this lad .

The site has great potential but it needs to be managed.

Disappointing stay

Lovely surroundings. No welcome or interest on arrival - like doing the paperwork for a purchase. No milk in room. Lavatory seat, stained at the front, slipped dramatically sideways when sat on - dangerous to an elderly or unsteady person. How could a cleaner have missed that? A Lovely room but there was a layer of dust on the ledge of the wood panelling all the way round it. We began to doubt the Covid measures allegedly carried out between occupants. After reporting the lavatory seat for a second time, an older receptionist sent up a man who made it secure. Un-engaging waiting staff - apart from one very nice young lady with amazingly long false eyelashes. Food very disappointing in evening - indifferent. Good breakfast, pleasant waiter. We stayed one night out of the two booked.

Shocking

Here's a timeline of our experience at The Wood Norton:

1. Not greeted/welcomed by receptionist upon arrival.

2. We arrived a couple of hours before checkin (around 1pm) and the receptionist didn't check if our room was ready or offer to keep our bags somewhere she instead just bluntly told us that checkin wasn't until 3pm and turned back to her computer.

3. While we waited for 3pm to roll around, we had some lunch. When our lunch arrived I asked for some ketchup which then never came. I waited for 5min while my lunch got cooler until I eventually went to search for it myself. After asking a member of staff for some I then waited around for another 5mins or so for someone to go on a hunt for some! By the time I sat back down to eat my lunch it was stone cold.

4. At no point did anyone come to check on us to see if everything was ok, if we wanted any drinks etc.

5. When 3pm arrived and we attempted to checkin a second time, our booking from OPL "hand't gone into the hotel's system" so we were without a room. The Receptionist called down the Manager and the Manager then tried to fob us off with a standard room and 20 towards our dinner. I had paid for a "Luxury Country Getaway - Feature Room" on OPL's site which was supposed to be their top end "feature room", and include 30pp towards dinner and 20 towards this "offer" from the Manager was absurd and of significantly less value. I told her as such and we were asked to go and have a complimentary drink at the bar while they sorted things out. My wife and I had already had a couple of alcoholic drinks with our lunch, but we were sobering up with a coffee thinking that we might have to turn around and go home. Eventually they managed to move some things around and get us the room we had paid for, but it was a really poor experience.

6. When booking the hotel through OPL's site, I also booked dinner and breakfast and let them know it was my wife's birthday. Much like the room this "didn't make it through to The Wood Norton's system" (even though it was in an email in their system that I could see on their the dinner plans I had requested were also in vein.

7. When we sat down for dinner both wine glasses on our table were filthy. The waitress replaced them with two different glasses didn't match. When asking a number of questions about the dishes the waitress had no idea and kept having to go back and forth to the kitchen to ask the chef. She then told us that she had just got back from self NONE of the staff were wearing any masks! For a "gourmet restaurant" with mains costing between 30 and 80 in the midst of a pandemic this is just unacceptable.

8. The burger I had earlier at lunch was then repeating on me, so the combination of the filthy wine glasses, lack of any kind of obvious sanitation or protection with masks on the staff, made us feel very uneasy about what we were eating and the cleanliness of the environment and was a massive distraction at dinner.

9. Breakfast in the morning was an absolute shambles. Once again, we weren't greeted upon entering the Brasserie instead the maitre d grumpily took us to a table right by the entrance to the kitchen so we had staff going back and forth next to us. We sat for about 30m before anyone took our order. During that time we saw the maitre d "clean" a table by removing the plates and then swiping the crumbs and debris onto the floor! She then relaid the table without first spraying or sanitising it and sat someone down at the table! All around us people were finishing their breakfast and leaving and NONE of their tables were being cleared or cleaned. By the time we gave our order we were surrounded by messy tables. When our toast was brought out to us it wasn't on a was just lying on the rubber tray with the drinks and the waitress just tossed it onto a plate on our table. I kid you not. We were utterly shocked. Clearly I could go on and on, but the short of it was it was a shocking service.

10. We were planning on having Afternoon Tea there, but with the experience we had at lunch, dinner and then the appalling breakfast, we didn't want to waste any more money and decided to just go home.

11. On checkout the receptionist didn't ask us how our stay that we owed some money for the wine we had at dinner and that was that! I was ready to give her an earful, but at that point I just couldn't be bothered and we just wanted to go home.

Without question this was the worst birthday surprise I have ever gifted my wife and the worst hotel we have ever stayed at.

Such a shame because it's a beautiful old manor house, but the collective staff are undertrained and lack any kind of experience or due care and attention in hospitality.