Bournemouth Highcliff Marriott Hotel — Hotel in Great Britain

I arrived at 10:30 pm after a full 21 hours of travel to find no food. No room service, no open restaurant (the website said the it was open until 1am), no convenience store of food. Nothing, Nada, Nope. There were no options close by either. The desk staff suggested a Dominoes Pizza by using the “food apps.” Eventually, I did have to CALL the pizza chain for dinner and had it delivered to my room. Top drawer.

I also arrived to find the “please excuse our mess” for renovations occurring at the hotel which was not advertised on the web, nor was I alerted to this prior to arrival as I might otherwise expect. Bad form.

The website also lists a business center. It is a computer in a closet. Nobody seems to know how to turn it on or work it either. No printer. They offer to print at the front desk in limited quantities, but an hour after my request, they were “still working at it….” I know most people travel with their laptops now and I would have brought mine too, but I had hoped to only be on the computer an hour to polish a business presentation, so it seems like a good idea to forgo my 16l laptop for the trip. I wish I had made different decisions.

Speaking of technology, the room’s internet required that I sign into my device anytime it had not been used for more than 15 min or so. It would also charge me 1.5 gbp for a speed that would do more than email and charge me each time I resigned in. Although these charges were later removed, it was a major inconvenience and hassle. The faster internet is also not stream-worthy, so don’t even try.

The front desk staff doesn’t seem to know the hotel, the amenities, the surrounding area, nor do they seem empowered or interested in learning. People could not direct me to tourism, restaurants, business services (given the limitations of the hotel) or even the nearest cup of coffee. I think management needs some training too (see #7)

My room had its own issues too.

A) The noise levels starting at 10pm far exceed what anyone might expect. The club underneath the hotel gets going with bass booms about 10 and just grows in popularity through about 2am. The party really gets going around 11:30 with festive frat boys drunk cursing, sexist catcalls, and despite the slurring, can easily be discerned by sheer volume and proximity. If the site allows, I have posted recordings from my bed and the window. When I reported it at midnight, they said they would “shut it down”, which was not my goal, but it was still going two hours later and I borrowed some noise cancelling headphones from a friend on the 4th floor to get some sleep. They never once offered to move my room (which was my goal).

B)The “internet” tv basically means YouTube and Bluetooth, so you are stuck with mostly BBC channels in the room and the ability to connect your device for MUSIC only…you cannot broadcast or screen share. No apps, no movie channels or what you might hope for in a hotel at this price point. Again, not a big deal if they did not characterize it otherwise.

At this juncture you might be asking why I had not contacted a manager. However, on the second night and after the continued noise issues, I did speak with manager Theresa who was a lovely woman who said she was grateful for me bring these to her attention and that she would look at the bill. Later I found out she took off a whopping 46 gpa on over a 1200 stay. Really? That is your effort to compensate me for this 2 star hotel stay? I promised her I would write this review. I am also sure she told the whole staff, based on the “attitude” I perceived from everyone on my last day.

So, that is the review I promised her and my husband who had to put up with my venting. My mom always said that I should say something positive, so the housekeeping staff were amazing, the views of the beach and ocean impeccable and the carpet was well designed and matched the drapes.

So...

If you are reading this review , please do yourself a favour and DO NOT visit this Marriott property especially if you are looking to celebrate anything special. We are loyal BonVoy elite customers for 10+ years now and this is the worst hotel we have ever visited and the worst ever stay we have had with Marriott. 1) There is no separate check in counter for Elite guests which is present in all other Marriott properties across the world; 2) The ladies at the reception are cold , un-inviting and the check in experience is very bland. No pleasantries and Sara/h was basically interested in finishing her standard guest check in pitch to get rid of us and did not answer any of our questions; 3) We requested for an upgrade (platinum guest) but the hotel was full so we were told we couldn’t get any (we booked the second best room available and checked on the BonVoy app and rooms of the highest grade were available so we were given false information); 4) Upon check in we saw the room had stains on the carpet, the towels, the glasses and there were no water bottles , we called the front desk 10+ times and no one answered, we then went down to complaint and were told that it will be taken care of, however nothing was taken care of , we got frustrated and went out for sightseeing instead; 5) The next day we left for the beach and came back at about 4pm to find a dirty room that was not cleaned. It is to note that even though we didn’t need to we reminded the front desk on the BonVoy app messaging feature as well to get our housekeeping done but it wasn’t till 4pm. We then called the from desk and as usual no one ever answers the call, we went down stairs to complaint and were told that the cleaning was still going on - the front desk or the housekeeping team did not even bat an eyelid at our complaint… after 30 mins an old Asian lady with a frown on her face came up to clean the room and asked us to leave otherwise she will not clean. When we told her to come back in 15 minutes she literally yelled at us and told us that she does not have the time. This was the breaking point for us as it is absolutely unacceptable for the housekeeping staff to yell at us and ask us to get out of a room that we have paid for just because they failed to do their job timely. We STILL left because we were tired at this point and knew the room will not be cleaned if we didn’t leave; 6) We then asked for the staff to cut our stay by a night and only stayed 2 nights instead of 3 as originally intended as by this point our celebratory mood had been ruined.; 7) This is an area where it rains a lot and there are NO umbrellas in the hotel even to rent. OVERALL it was clear that the staff is discontented with the hotel management and taking it out on the customers. From a customer point of view we are paying more than what we did before covid and shortage of staff / management issues should not be up for customer concession especially when we are paying more - Marriott needs to take care of their operations and this hotel does not even deserve to be a single star , forget four or five star. Continuing the horrible guest experience Marriott and the hotel did not send us the guest satisfaction survey to leave a feedback (as they are aware what a poorly managed property this is) so leaving the feedback out here and on other websites. The only positive is the location so do not believe the fake reviews...

Well I visited this venue and met with the events manager as I was looking at a place to host my mothers wake. She showed us around the venue along with a room (which must of been the best room in the hotel) and all seemed great. I was happy with what they were offering and we agreed on a deal. I was not only using the venue for the wake I also booked 11 bedrooms. I received the contract and the price had jumped up £700 without any warning. I called up and they offered me £200 off and put it down to a communication error. As you can imagine the circumstances of the event left me little time to change venue so I had to pay it. It was like they used the circumstances to rip me off.

Little did I know them conning me out of an extra £500 was the best part of the whole experience - we arrived on the day after the funeral to no bar in our venue, well there was a bar but no alcohol or money in the till. After 45 minutes they seemed to almost fix the problem (the beer taps didn't work at all) for me then to be told they had made a mistake in the ordering of the food and they had missed 50 portions of my order out. They fixed this after some time and compensated us with 9 bottles of cheap wine.

The venue events actually caused the wake to be split into 2 venues because of the lack of service and lack of supplies. The bar fridge was empty when we arrived and run out soon, people left the venue and went and did there own things due to how poorly it had all been setup. In the evening when they had run out of little stock they had I asked one of the 4 bar staff in my venue to get a Pepsi to which he told me they had run out and I needed to go upstairs to the other bar, I asked him and he said no and carried on talking to his colleagues, that sums the whole attitude up.

When it came to checking in the rooms they were tiny box rooms with barely any natural sunlight and they were filthy, the bathrooms were the worst I've seen in a hotel. Now bear in mind I have 11 rooms at £250 a night you would have thought they would of given me some nice rooms but these were all run down dirty and had blocked windows.

On check out the events manager wanted to see me and she was massively apologetic but the thing is this was meant to be a day of celebration and THEY were responsible for ruining this.

The most disappointing thing is that they offered me 10% refund off the event (not the 11 rooms that cost £250 each) and was adamant that was the best they could do. I then refused it and said I'd rather raise awareness at how poor they are and I wanted to contact the local paper she panicked. All of a sudden my refund went from £120 to £500 or 2 rooms on a night of my choice (except weekends or summer holidays) which I have continued to refuse.

The hotel will respond and say they gave us £270 worth of drink and extra food but the truth is that £270 extra wine is cost price as a customer not what the hotel pay. They will also no doubt try and put a spin on it like they have in many of their other bad reviews but seriously if you are thinking about hosting an event stay away equally if you are looking for a good hotel in Bournemouth stay away - go to the Hilton up the road which is brand new and 100 times the...