Cave Hotel and Golf Resort — Hotel in Borough of Swale

Well, after looking forward to this for a while, I finally got to visit the Cave Hotel for my 30th Birthday. Upon arrival, the hotel presents amazing and sits beautiful in the grounds. We parked the car with ease and made our way to reception - which is where things just got a little strange.

Reception isn’t clearly signposted, so the couple in front of us actually walked straight past the door. Once the door opens, there’s a big thick curtain right behind - giving the illusion that you’ve gone to the wrong door. It wasn’t until someone popped their head out, that we knew we were in the right place. Most odd.

Check-in was a breeze, no complaints from this perspective. Off to the room we go… the outside temperature was 6 degrees upon arrival, so we were looking forward to a nice warm room. Wrong! We stayed in 210 and upon entering the room was smacked in the face with the freezing cold breeze blowing through the room - it was genuinely warmer in the corridor outside! The room itself was lovely, full of mod-cons such as electric curtains and mood lighting on the walls etc., but the cream carpet fitted to the rooms is definitely a bad idea. Ours was stained all over the floor where the coffee machine is, and there was what looked like mud patches all over the carpet from someone’s shoes - which tarnished the initial appearance of the room. Whilst on the subject of the room, the mini fridge was well-stocked and I decided to help myself to the wine gums - only to find someone had previously opened them, eaten some, and put the pack back in its original position. Disappointing for such a high calibre hotel. Why was this not checked?

Down to the bar we went for drinks… our walk took us through the front door of the Firepit and we were greeted by two gents. Who subsequently guided us down to the Cowgirl lounge, and said our drinks would follow. A staggering 27 minutes later our two drinks arrived at the table, and the careless waitress threw the contents of one straight over my companions trousers and shoes. Again, clumsy, avoidable and not what you expect to see in a hotel of this standard.

Finally, the Korean Cowgirl. Shocking. Wouldn’t bother, make sure you book the Firepit for food! We ordered the share board for 2 people at a cost of £70. It came out swimming in fat and grease on the wooden board, so much so that it flowed onto the table - not the most appealing of presentations. The turkey was absolutely divine and by far the best part, but generally speaking the food was lukewarm, the sweet potato fries were in fact cold. Yet again, I’m struggling to understand why as the restaurant was dead! There were 7 seated tables at the time we were dining, so I cannot be told it was too busy. In fact, I counted the ratio of staff to guests… the staff significantly outweighed the guests. It was clear that it was the birthday of one of the staff members (who was exceptionally outspoken and loud by the way which I just found utterly rude to everyone else), and was visiting the restaurant with her father. The staff paid more attention talking to them, attending to all of her requests, rather than focus enough on the actual paying guests in there. Terrible service!

We thought we’d go for a little swim after dinner, but the pool was quite full so we decided not to bother. So I cannot really comment on these facilities as we didn’t go in.

All of the staff, especially in the customer facing roles, are notably young, inexperienced and more interested in talking amongst themselves about graduations, hair colours, and weekend plans than they are focusing on the guests - who, let’s be honest, have paid a decent whack to visit!

To summarise, this place just isn’t worth the hype! It might look great on the instagram photos of celebrities, but let’s face reality, that’s not what you get. The rooms are nice, but the carpets are knackered and either needs deep cleaning or replacing. The staff (in the bars and restaurants) are not up to the grade in my opinion.

The reception staff were fantastic by the way,...

Visited The Cave after seeing lots of recommendations on TikTok but after having experienced it myself I feel the videos on social media of this hotel are all hype.

At first glance the hotel is aesthetically appealing but like a lot of other reviews have said, the rooms are not what you’d expect of a luxury hotel. There are stains all over the carpet and scuff marks all over the furniture. I’ve been to cleaner looking travel lodges to be honest.

There were several issues with our room/service/stay that took away from the experience and made the stay feel less than luxury. Upon arriving in the room we had a card saying “happy anniversary”. I booked this stay with my friend, we’re not in a relationship and no where on my booking did I claim it was an anniversary - I didn’t even leave a note on our booking at all. Wasn’t that fussed about this mix up but as a luxury hotel, I don’t think you should be making those kinds of careless mistakes.

We were given the disability room (neither me or my friend are disabled). The bathroom sink of this room was broke - every time you turned it on, it vibrated and made the loudest noises possible and the water came out of it like a jet wash. Again, just not luxury hotel standard. Also not sure why we were given the disability room in the first place, the hotel was clearly not fully booked so they could have easily given us a regular room. The disability room had red strings every where and bathroom was also modified for disability and therefore looked different to the photos on the website and felt slightly less ‘luxury’ and ‘aesthetic’ which was why we booked it to begin with.

When we entered the rooms we had robes for the pool but no slippers, we called reception and this was quickly amended but again, for the price of this stay I shouldn’t have to call reception for missing room items.

We went to the pool and was not particularly impressed by this either. I understand that it’s a small hotel but the pool and the surrounding area is not big enough for more than 4 people at a time, let alone the 42 room capacity this hotel claims to hold. There’s only 4 lounge chairs beside the pool and there’s no where else in this area to put your belongings or sit. The pool itself was lukewarm at best and from what we experienced the bubbles in the jacuzzi only worked on one side - which was occupied the whole time we were there so all in all not a particularly relaxing experience. We ordered drinks whilst at the pool and they took a good 30-40 minutes to come. The couple behind us also ordered drinks and the drinks took so long that they thought the order had not gone through so went back to order it again and then all 4 drinks rocked up at once. Again, there’s nothing luxury about waiting the best part of an hour for drinks and when they did come they didn’t even look like the photos on the tablet menu. Don’t advertise drinks with garnishes etc. if that’s not how they actually come - it just looks and feels cheap, not luxury.

The next issue we encountered was at breakfast. My friend ordered toast which was stone cold. She rang reception and asked if this could be rectified and they did bring her a new plate which was slightly warmer but it took them about 15 mins which seems like a long time to make a plate of toast.

I will say the staff we encountered did try and rectify things and were friendly but I don’t think that is enough to make up for all of this hotels many shortcomings.

All in all, I expected far more especially for the price and I was left disappointed....

So disappointed!!! I was looking forward to having my 40th birthday dinner at the fire pit. We ordered 7 dishes and as they bring them separately we asked a member of the stuff if they had forgotten one of the dishes or was it going to arrive later as we were about to finish our meal. It turned up it was supposed to arrive with our starters! She reassured us we could have it in 5minutes so we didn’t mind waiting for our starter as we finished our meal. After all it was my birthday and we didn’t want to focus on any negatives.

We finished the meal and waited about 10min to call a waitress to clear our table and get the dessert menu. She cleared the table and 5min later came back to wipe the table whilst asking us if we wanted dessert as she couldn’t remember if we previously said yes. We laughed and said we definitely wanted dessert! She came back with the dessert menus and 5min later we called another waitress to take our order as it seemed we had been forgotten again!

15min later with no dessert in sight we asked a waitress who went to check and 5min later we asked another waitress who checked her machine and said “oh yes! You ordered it 18min ago! Let me check with the kitchen, but it takes time to prepare you know!?” Given there had been 40min since we finished our meal, we were no longer wanting to eat and by this time, very disappointed with the service so we asked for her to cancel the dessert order and here is when we were treated very rudely. She was arguing back that the desserts take time to prepare and that we had only been waiting for 15min. I am not used to confrontation, specially when it comes from a waitress that should be looking after us and I was not going to discuss that in fact we had been waiting for over 40min so I politely smiled and said we would like to cancel the order please. By that time the dessert arrived and she kept on asking if we wouldn’t want them now that they already arrived. I kept on politely repeating “no thank you as we are no longer hungry having waited this long” to which she kept on repeating with a really bad attitude: “you only had to wait 15min” well, that is not the case but I was not prepared to have an argument given her horrendous rude attitude hoovering around our table huffing and puffing. She even had the cheek to walk away still cursing at us to other waitress which I found the most offensive given I was the customer being done wrong, still being polite and having to bear this outrageous treatment back. When the bill arrived she still wanted to charge us for the desserts and I had the patience to politely send the bill back to be corrected. The waitresses were extremely rude about it just turning around not even apologising at any point and giving us bad looks and a very rude tone of voice. This is not the treatment anyone would nor should expect but it was particularly distressing and disappointing given we were celebrating my birthday. It really ruined our night despite our best efforts to push through in a positive attitude.

It is a real shame also because we were hopping this could become our regular place to go with our friends given is very close to us and on paper the place is what we want. However, we are not prepared to put up with bad service, confrontational staff and rude manners so unfortunately we would have to report back to our different groups of friends this is not the...