This is NOT a 5* establishment.

This is NOT a 5* establishment.

When reading this, please bear in mind that I m judging my one-night stay at Ellenborough Park based on it supposedly being a 5-star hotel.

The venue is lovely, the surroundings and the room we stayed in was furnished to a high standard, this was the only 5-star part of my stay.

To keep this concise, here s a list of noteworthy things that happened/did not happen during my stay which I wouldn t expect from a 5*:

- While waiting for my room to be ready, I went to the bar, told the bartender that I would wait in the front room and he would come to take my order. He never came.

- Whilst in this room, another waiter was serving afternoon teas, not once did she come over to me and ask if I wanted anything. Appreciate she was busy, but 5* service would at least engage with a guest sat at the table

- Wanting to return to my room which was in the main house, from the spa in one of the outbuildings, there was a door marked this way to rooms 16-19 , i was in room 19. The lady at the spa reception said it s not possible to go that way, you must go outside through the main entrance , when asked for her to elaborate on the reason for this she was unable to provide one, I got on of those blank meaningless responses you d expect from a Wetherspoons staff member. So I had to walk outside in the blistering cold, past the front room where people were enjoying afternoon tea, in my bath robe, what I sight that must have been for them.

- We were over-charged for our room service tray charge, this was corrected, but shouldn t have happened in the first place. Ordinarily, I wouldn t care much for this mistake but on top of everything else I feel compelled to mention it.

- The biggest inconvenience was that my luxury suite , described by the man who took me to the room as the best room in the house , was directly above the bar which was playing music loud enough for me to hear the lyrics all evening from my room. Look, it s a Friday night and I appreciate that an old building like this probably has thin ceilings. But the receptionist guaranteed to me that it would be switched off by 10pm. By 10:30pm it was still blaring and I had to call down once again to ask them to turn it off

- Breakfast in bed was not made possible as it came on a plate only, no large 5*star tray to allow me to safely place it on the bed, so I had to eat at the table instead. To add, the cremated sausage and dry mushrooms weren t even worth getting out of bed for.

As you re reading this, I m sure you re probably thinking ok, you ve mentioned the bad bits, but where is the fair balance with the good bits? To be completely honest, no interaction I had with the staff at this hotel was worth highlighting as exceptional - the building and surroundings are the only great things about this hotel.

I will not be coming back, and feel obliged to suggest to other people I know contemplating coming here, that there are much better 5* places in the U.K.

One of the criteria set by Visit Britain when awarding a hotel 5 stars is: Exceptional levels of proactive service and customer care. - I ll let you be the judge on whether this was the case during my stay.

To top it off, we weren t even asked how our stay was upon checking out. I guess they already know the answer...