Nicola Barker

Review of Donnington Valley Hotel and Sp...

Nice relaxed hotel with friendly staff and excelle...

Nice relaxed hotel with friendly staff and excellent breakfast. Good spa/pool area with over thirty sun loungers. Nice to be able to get food and drinks around the pool but it did get very noisy in the afternoon so best avoid it at that time if you want to relax. Negatives about my weekend stay at this hotel were that our bedroom was so hot the first night I couldn't sleep and we couldn't get the air conditioning panel in the room to work. The maid the next morning said it was broken but after speaking to reception we were told that it's connected to the rest of the hotel so you can only have heating or air conditioning on in the whole hotel one at the time and you can't control as a separate setting in your hotel bedroom which I find very odd especially as there is a control pad in the bedroom!!! So on the second night we had to sleep with both velux windows open which made the room cooler but we then had a lot of noise from the road, guests leaving the hotel and wind and rain. So although we had a lovely big comfortable bed unfortunately we struggled to sleep both nights.

And lastly the restaurant in the evening is nice but lacking in any atmosphere even though it was busy. Service at the start of our meal was good but once our main course was finished it was hard to get a dessert menu or bill. We waited 15 mins for the man who offered us a dessert menu to bring it but it never arrived (later found out he was management) so we asked someone else then couldn't get anyone's attention for our bill. It felt like all the staff had disappeared to the function that was on in the next room which was holding a very noisy party. I also didn't like the fact that I was sat at a table which had a view of the staff serving area so eating a meal while watching staff scrap food into a large bin etc wasn't particularly nice, a simple screen in front of this area would solve this problem. So overall we had a nice weekend at Donnington Valley but it was let down by a few things that could be sorted out by management. The best bits of the hotel are the breakfast especially the waffle maker and the little white company products in the bathroom.