Down Hall Hotel, Spa & Estate

Good points just about outweighed the not so good

We wanted a nice quiet weekend away, unfortunately we were woken by staff at 0730/0800hrs the first morning and being located next to the staff room didn t help. However, the staff were very helpful and moved us to another room. The spa isn t included and is at an extra cost, something that want super clear on the booking page. The food was amazing and the restaurant and bar staff were excellent. Overall it s nice, but we wouldn t say it s worth the money we paid.

Not the experience that was expected

The venue was okay, but it was not brilliant. The levels of service were rather shocking for the impression the hotel gives in adverts. The service provided by the staff needs a lot of work.

The appearance of the venue was nice, however, though a little dated in areas. The room we stayed in was tired and dreary. We spotted a lot of dust and cobwebs throughout. The food was of a good standard. The cons however, outweigh the pros without question, especially in light of the service and the occasion for which we booked.

Reservations had communication errors so rebooking of orders and facilities was required.

Before arrival, we called the hotel to check if we could have the already pre-ordered champagne put onto ice in our room to enjoy when we arrived at the hotel. We thought this was a simple request but it took 2 members of staff, over 2 phone calls spanning 3 hours to confirm whether this was possible. The second staff member then proceeded to confirm that this would be charged to the room - clearly misunderstanding our request. It took an inordinate time for him to realise that we simply wanted the pre-ordered champagne to be chilled.

On arrival at check in, the reception staff confirmed our booking included: breakfast on 2 days and dinner on 2 days in the garden room, plus the fact we had pre-paid for a bottle of wine and a cheese board for our first night at a specified time. The reception further advised that the spa facility was not included at Down Hall Hotel and Spa . It seemed as though the package we booked was missold. Nevertheless, she offered to contact the spa on our behalf to obtain availability for us to attend. She never came back to us with this information. Our hotel phone was broken so we couldn t call the reception or the spa to follow up with this and used our mobiles to do so instead - we advised the reception staff if this but they seemed unfazed by the broken phone and didn t do anything about this.

Issues with pre-ordered food and drink:

When passing the reception whilst returning to our room later in the day, we checked that all was in order for the wine and cheese order, which was confirmed.

Despite following up several times, this was unfortunately about 1 hour late.

We weren t able to accept this as we had dinner reservations - also at the hotel. We asked for someone to meet us at dinner to discuss rearranging this but no one met us.

The waiter was mildly apologetic but otherwise didn t offer any resolution.

Overall, a rather disappointing for our first evening of the honeymoon.

On our second night, again whilst passing reception to return to our room, we asked to speak to reception regarding the prepaid wine and cheese which the hotel still hadn t discussed with us. After a brief explanation of the situation, the reception staff seemed entirely aware of the problem in a very relaxed manner - there was no apology, nor any acknowledgment that anything had been wrong. We were taken aback by this and had to prompt for any sort of suggestion regarding sorting out a new time for this to be prepared.

Issues with dinner:

At dinner on our first night, we were presented with a menu that was part of our booking package. In particular, the dishes were pre-paid and so didn t show any prices next to the menu choices save for some meals (and drinks) which attracted a supplemental cost. We purchased additional items that weren t included in the package.

However, at dinner on our second and final evening, we were presented with the same menu in a different format - costs were attached to every item. When we queried this, we were briefly told they gave us this menu purposefully because it wasn t clear what our dinner reservation was booked under. We said we didnt understand what this meant. The waitress provided us with the menu we received on night no.1 instead and apologised to us after we explained that we booked a package which included dinner in the garden room for 2 nights. We presented our booking information which confirmed this.

Shortly after, someone who appeared to be in a managerial position approached us and tried to swap our menus again with very little explanation as to why. He said we shouldn t have had the initial menu on day 1 at all but that he ll let us off . He didn t make us feel comfortable at all - though it was entirely unclear why our booking didn t seem to include dinner despite the details on our booking confirmation saying that it did.

It seemed as though many staff were new and in training, and the advertising is unclear, but errors across the trip made the overall experience poor.

The bedroom were uncomfortably warm with no air flow. A fan was provided but this made no difference. The windows were hard to open; likely due to old age and poor upkeep.

My spouse and I would not usually normally be so critical. However, this trip was booked as a honeymoon following our wedding, which was just 3 days earlier, so this was meant to be a special stay with the purpose of unwinding and relaxing. None of which was achieved unfortunately. We had mentioned the purpose of our booking to the staff on numerous occasions before we visited (by phone) and we were asked by the staff in person if we were celebrating any special occasions - upon check in, at dinner on our first night and at check out - though staff didn't show much response or appreciation to this at all.

Lovely grounds and spacious comfortable room let down by service and food portions

The check in went smoothly, the room was comfortable, spacious and quiet and outlook was lovely with lawn and woods beyond. However, using the lift to the first floor, we encountered an unpleasant toilet smell in the lift and two of the hallways. Thankfully, our room and immediate corridor were fine.

There was a wedding on, so the hotel was busy. We went downstairs in the early evening to have a drink before the meal. Staff were running around frantically, trying to serve the guests on the terrace. We were ignored for 15 minutes, despite being near the bar and being told to have a seat and someone would take our order. To his credit, the barman did give us a drink on the house as we d been waiting so long. We were hoping to have a quiet drink but with Ibiza nights trance music blaring outside, literally shaking the windows and competing cool jazz in the bar, this was impossible.

Dinner was fine although portions were rather stingy and a large part of the menu had supplements over and above the DB&B package that we d booked. Service was rather slow and the waitress was inexperienced - for example, the wine was just poured without us tasting and plates cleared before we d finished eating.

I d be interested in seeing if the experience is any better without a wedding/themed event on but they seemed to be preparing for another wedding the next morning at breakfast so I suspect this is infrequent.

Not the birthday I had hoped for and unfortunately we will not be returning.