Bath Spa Hotel

Beautiful hotel, reception and concierge staff very good, terrible food on room service. It was cold under cooked and shameful!
Manager refunded barely 20% of the food cost!
At £200 a night it’s hit and miss here some good points and some bad but I probably would not stay here again unfortunately.
Also cigarette buts littered all over the balcony.
Spa was ok but worn and run down particularly outside.
The price of this place reflects the up keep costs of the premises not the service in my opinion.

We have come her for some years, and have been increasingly disappointed. Poor value for money.
Disinterested welcome and goodbye. Was given incorrect information from reception when enquiring about restaurant booking, so we ended up having to go to town for dinner.
Room ok, but they didn’t have any double rooms.
Breakfast average — orange juice from concentrate.
Will look for other place to stay next time we go too Bath.

The good:
— Rooms that seem to be recently refurbished — quality furniture, linens, bathroom
— Amenities include spa with good facilities (though do book appointments ahead, particularly on a bank holiday weekend!)
— Easy walk into town — about 10 minutes with the first few mostly downhill
— Throughout the front lounge and downstairs area, it’s full of cozy couches and chairs near fireplaces (I don’t know the specific type, it’s not a natural log fire but seems to have some kind of dial as if for gas — but still nice)
— Free Wi-​Fi, but so far has not worked for video streaming
The bad:
— Water damage to the main hotel walls and some walls in the spa
— My major issue is the food. This is both the Colonnade for all-​day dining and the Vellore for breakfast (only place they serve breakfast; haven’t gone there for dinner yet). It’s barely a step up from airport food, not to mention completely different from what is stated online. For a 5-​star hotel you’d expect (1) many more options and (2) much better quality. I was super excited for good food and so far the only thing I’ve been impressed by were the sweet potato fries.
[Particularly bizarre — if you get a «side salad,» it’s a very small bowl of red onion, some rocket, more red onion, some sliced up tomato, a bit more red onion, some cucumber slices, and oh, yeah — more red onion. That’s not a salad, it’s basically salsa.]
ETA: The service has rapidly deteriorated — massive wait times, etc. Very, very odd weekend.

The hotel full name is Macdonald Spa Bath Hotel.
My partner and stayed here October 6^th. It is one stop of many during a 2 week tour of the UK.
The property is exquisite! We felt like celebrities staying at such a posh hotel. The weather was perfect which made the stay all the better.
We stayed in room 420 overlooking the back of the property. The room and views were gorgeous. Incredible bathroom and décor.
Breakfast was fresh with a good variety for our tour group. Service from the staff was excellent.
We were so impressed that we plan to put this place on our agenda for a return trip.

spent 3 nights at this beautiful breathtaking hotel! but besides there doorman and concierge this is a No service hotel!!! the hotel staff and waiters and waitress speak no English!!! it’s an English hotel! very disappointing for such a beautiful place! good luck getting a drink or fresh towels in your room! very expensive hotel with no service!

This is a review for the spa only. I booked a treatment here because the Thermae was all booked when I requested an appointment. Unfortunately for many reasons, it was not the relaxing spa atmosphere I was looking for.
You must pay for access to the facilities beyond the treatment, which appears to be pretty standard in the UK. No big deal. However the facilities were jam packed with hotel guests. There were no places to put your towel and robe by the pool and hot tub since so many people were there.
All the facilities are co-​ed, which is also fine, except that it means you’ll get to watch couples makeout or listen to loud conversations while trying to enjoy the hot tubs and steam rooms.
The waiting room for the treatments was a disappoint. No magazines or anything to look at and only room temp water was available for drinking. My treatment was okay. Qualitywise it was not the best and not the worst. After the treatment though, they try to upsell you on product. What a way to ruin the post-​massage/​facial bliss, by having to listen to sales pitch. After your treatment you have access to the «relaxation room». This is a lovely room with water, tea, magazines, comfortable seating. This should double as the waiting room!
The locker rooms are okay, but not as well equipped as a typical American spa.

I came here for a spa day with 4 friends a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it.
When we arrived we were given fresh white robes, towels & slippers which I thought was a lovely touch.
The spa consisted of an indoor pool with comfy lounge seats, a separate room with 2 saunas, an ice room, 2 massage showers & 2 steam rooms which different aromatherapy scents and also a lovely heated outdoor pool with a jacuzzi section.
The whole place was extremely clean & the staff were very attentive.
Would certainly recommend and will definitely go back.

Stayed here for two nights on a ebookers offer. What really struck me as soon as i entered was that it reeked, really reeked, of hospital food. As you walked around the lovely, if dated and a little threadbare, halls, the scent would change from boiled cabbage to baked beans to 2-​day-​old Sunday roast. The staff were indeed all very helpful and attentive but the fact that i felt i was in an old folks home meant that we only had a single, extortionately overpriced drink in the collonade bar, surrounded by many paintings of out-​of-​proportion horses while being careful not to squeeze too many feathers from the holes in the very dead sofa.
The spa, the food? No idea, but Bath itself was more than capable of satisfying those needs.

This seems like it’s the ritziest place in Bath. It may very well be. But for what would be expected from this hotel, it is lacking.
Our rooms were nice enough. Very large bathrooms with mirrors that don’t fog up were a plus, though the shower’s water pressure left something to be desired. The room itself seemed pretty standard, though another couple we spoke to said they had a stain in their carpet that emanated an unfortunate odor. The food at the restaurant was also pretty good, but the service was abominable. The waitstaff, not only in the restaurant, but behind the desk tried to be helpful and accommodating, but it often fell short. One night our dinner took three hours and waiters would come to our table with items that should have been ours, but would leave because they were confused as to whether they truly were ours, only to come back about fifteen minutes later with the same items (coffee, wine, entrees).
As for location, it isn’t in the heart of Bath, but it is completely walkable. Go down a road and cross a bridge and you’re in town in ten minutes or less. I can’t speak to the spa amenities, but given that Bath has a history of pretty much nothing but spas and baths and relaxing vacations, it better be something spectacular.
While they put forth a strong effort, the service is lacking enough to bring the hotel to the next level. Were I to return to Bath, I would opt to stay at a bed and breakfast in town instead.

I came here for my honeymoon back in 2000. Great setting and we’d been before. Gym and pool were great. Food was absolutely lovely, the only drawback was that maintenance was being carried out all day outside the room. Not ideal for a honeymooning couple. We complained and to their credit they stopped the works immediately and refunded our bill by a substantial amount. The management and staff were all highly professional and courteous and we came away feeling valued as customers and wanting to return, despite all the initial disturbance. We will return again soon to celebrate our anniversary and are really looking forward to it. Love the hotel, love the town. Brilliant!

A nice hotel with well equipped rooms. It does, however, suffer from several problems. Firstly, the walk to your room can be really quite long, involving lifts and several staircases. Secondly, the hotel hosts weddings, which, in the case of my stay resulted in me having to step over the bodies of the semi-​comatose wedding guests on my way to my room. Hotel staff seemed completely absent from the area and were obviously not looking after the interests of their «other» guests. Expensive, and not particularly good value for money.

Quite good spa membership deal if it’s local and you use the facilities often. Has seemed to decline in standards somewhat over the years (no more unlimited fluffy white towels and Molton Brown shampoo and hair conditioner!) but still a relaxing place to chill out, swim and keep fit at the gym.

Avoid this place — it’s owned by McDonald’s. Honestly, go check out the facts for yourself. I used to work in a small town house hotel, which is by far the best way to experience a stay in Bath itself, where you can easily walk to the shops and other attractions. This place, set so far out of Bath that you need a taxi to go anywhere meaningful, is purely for people with too much money that don’t really want to stay in Bath at all, but just enjoy a luxury hotel and be waited on hand and foot. One woman who stayed at my hotel refused the best room in the place because it was too ‘antiquarian’, I shit you not, so she paid an extra £400-£500 (per night, that is) to stay at the Spa. If you want to hang around with people like that in a corporate hotel, be my guest.

Expensive and imposing. Good for meetings in the lounge or a private room and the food is pretty good too, but somehow it lacks ‘character’.

The crowning glory of Bath is The Bath Spa. Set on a hill in seven acres of magnificent grounds and just walking distance from the center of Bath, this splendid Georgian mansion has been completely refurbished and offers elegant accommodation, six conference rooms, and the latest in video-​conferencing technology. Each beautifully appointed bedroom has all the luxuries you would expect from a hotel of this class, including monogrammed towels, aromatherapy bath and body care toiletries, CD players and wonderful views of the city and the spectacular grounds. Here fine cuisine is deftly prepared by Executive Chef, Andrew Hamer, who oversees its preparation and presentation in The Bath Spa’s two restaurants using fresh, locally farmed ingredients. Modern British cooking is set off to advantage in the elegant surroundings of The Vellore Restaurant, while the conservatory style of The Alfresco showcases a more Mediterranean feel.
But someone has to keep a watchful eye on the minute details involved in keeping two hotels of such merit running smoothly. Such a man is Michael Grange whose background is well versed in the business of hospitality. His exuberance and passion for his hotels so impressed me. Now as Regional General Manager for both the Bath Spa and Francis Hotel in Bath, his excellence in service standards and guest care becomes manifest. Through his smooth and profitable running, the Bath Spa is now positioned as a premier five star hotel. In fact, it is endorsed by the Leading Hotels of the World whilst Conde Nast Traveller Magazine readers voted the hotel one of the three top spa hotels in the UK in 1999 and 2000.
The Bath Spa restaurants offer superb new menus on a contemporary English theme. The chefs prefer to source the best ingredients locally and dealing with the growers face-​to-​face guarantees freshness and quality. The food is cooked well, not cluttered, in order to be able to taste each item. A blend classical with trendy, from intricate to slightly more refined to robust, always bringing forth fresh, clean flavors.
The night I dined at Alfresco, the Mediterranean-​style restaurant at The Bath Spa, began with house oak smoked salmon in a lemon vinaigrette with an avocado and horseradish soufflé. Another appetizer was British boiled ham hock with a lush terrine of black pudding and tart piccalilli. The garden pea soup was a rich broth deliciously accented with minted cream and the parmesan cheese risotto, always a difficult dish to produce, was perfectly cooked, the crisped pieces of parmesan adding texture to the softness of the rice. Always my favorite is the English roast rack of lamb topped with a herb crust. Dauphinoise potatoes — a concoction of layered potatoes and cream, and char grilled aubergine stuffed with a medley of tomatoes and herbs turned out to be excellent side dishes while the twice-​baked cheese soufflé with roasted tomatoes, a spring onion salsa and polenta cake showcased the chef”s ability to combine tastes and textures.
Desserts were heavenly; summer berry pavlova with layers of meringue, raspberries, blackcurrants and lemon sorbet; dense dark chocolate terrine with white chocolate sorbet and great selection of British and European cheeses. Coffee and chocolate Italian kisses arrived as the finale to a delicious repast.