Durdle Door Holiday Park — Hotel in Great Britain

I dunno, it should have been a wonderful stay for a birthday celebration, but their new parking system is not fit for purpose and caused stress and anxiety which overshadowed the trip. ||With the cost of the stay you’d think they’d offer parking included across the Estate instead of trying to squeeze every last penny out of guests. And with check in being 4pm and check out 10am why not let guests who arrive early park in the space next to their allocated cabin until key collection time. What difference would it make? ||If you stay at the park they do claim its 50% off parking across the 3 locations (fine) but the system doesn’t seem to be able to handle what it is met with. We parked at Durdle Door for 20 mins at noon as check in was 4pm. Gave the reg number & moved to Lulworth Cove, came back to Durdle Door to check in & pay for parking as was told pay at the end of the day at a cost of 10£ rather than the 20£ day rate. Nope. I spent the next hour trying to sort out what was going on as the reception staff were not qualified to deal with it…|Me: Why is it trying to charge me £32? It’s meant to be £10. |Them: “Hummmm, not sure”. |Me: Thats not even the day rate… |Them: “Hummm, don’t know”. |Me: Is there someone that does know? |Them: “No”. |Me: So what do I do? |Them: “Hummm, not sure, pay it and then submit an appeal” |Me: I have to submit an appeal?|Them: Yes. Maybe try again.|Me: So walk all the way back there for the third time and what then when it doesn’t work?|Them: Hummm, not sure. |Me: This is crazy, £32 for less than 4 hours in a car park?|Them: Hummm, not sure. ||I tried all 3 machines and all gave various different charges. For some reason I was finally charged £16. I have no idea what that was even for but I had no option but to pay otherwise I would have got a ticket, and not having any idea what I was paying for or if it would tally with their useless system to show I had paid the correct amount I was concerned I would still get a ticket. ||It was very stressful and totally ruined the first day of our trip, and then the last day of our trip (we were only there for 2 nights!) as I had to go though the "not sure's' and "don't knows" all over again on check out with three other unqualified staff members on the desk… finally they did bring someone (after asking again if there might be someone who might be qualified) but they needed to refer to the “parking team” as I clearly had been overcharged and if I hadn’t paid I would have got a ticket. How is this even a thing?! Its insane. If they are going to run these systems they either need a car park attendant to help out, or have a functioning system. You can't even get a receipt. You need to scan a QR code within a few seconds to get emailed one, but there is barely a signal across the entire Estate and yet they rely on this complex technology anyway. ||The location is amazing & we have visited before for the day but this time decided to stay in the park. In the past you got a ticket from the machine to display across all 3 car parks. Simple and effective. Worrying about this parking nonsense totally overshadowed the trip that cost A LOT of money and may have been worth it if they didn’t ruin it with trying to get another tenner out of people already paying hundreds of pounds for a few nights in a caravan. It epitomises everything wrong with this country… greed, & people not qualified to deal with the situations that arise from it. Harriet did apparently sort the situation out as I did have a refund on my credit card for the excess parking fee a few days later, but the whole situation was completely unnecessary to start with. ||Durdle Door itself is beautiful, if not incredibly overcrowded as bus loads of tourists are dropped off each day, and some like to play loud music on the beach. Lulworth cove is less crowded tho. One plus side of staying on site is that you can head down to Durdle Door later in the day once the day trippers head home, so you get more of a sense of relaxation but still have some of the vibe of having some other visitors still around. ||We liked the shop on site, fresh bread and pastries in the morning and well stocked. The bar/restaurant was nice too, good choice of food and beer. We got take out pizza which was nice and they had a singer on the Saturday evening which was enjoyable whilst we had a beer and waited for our pizza to be cooked. ||All in all I don't think we...

I chose this park for a weekend getaway in December, due to the stunning position on the coast, and the beauty of the 2 bed caravan homes at a reasonable price. I was told to check in by 9pm on the day of arrival.

On the day (cold, windy and rainy), we arrived at 8.45 pm and were quickly and informally checked in via the bar. Upon arriving at the caravan, we noticed that while the home itself was clean and ready, the heating system had been left switched off, 8°C inside the home, not ideal at 9pm with a 3 year old in our company, ready to sleep. No easy way to find out how to switch it on either, we thought we would find a thermostat somewhere to set up chosen temperature, but no such thing.

Upon explaining the issue back at the bar, I was told heating instructions should be available in the caravan (yet, as confirmed later, there weren't any). Nonetheless, upon insisting that there was no clear way for me to know how to switch on the heating, I was told a technician would come to help. The technician quickly came, and showed us the heating is controlled via the gas boiler hidden in a wall cabinet in one the bathrooms, via a clock thermostat on the boiler itself. The heating took a couple of hours to take the caravan to a decent temperature, and was left on throughout the duration of our 2-day stay, - we were later told someone forgot to switch it on prior to our arrival.

The first night however, heating would no longer be the issue. With heavy winds sweeping the area, one of the park's maintenance car left incorrectly parked right opposite our caravan saw its intruder alarm get set off by winds throughout the night. On top of that, extraction fan flaps from kitchen and bathroom piping outlets kept ticking and banging loudly against their frames at all times. By the morning, we were knackered. The staff who came to pick up the car simply suggested to complain at reception (but they were the one who left the car unchecked the whole night). We mentioned all issues to staff, only to be told they would look into the caravan later as their maintenance team were working on several issues (with an occupancy rate of perhaps 5%, I would have prioritised customers to anything else?).

By the second evening, the flaps issue was still there, reception closed. I had to call their mobile out-of-hours number and finally a young staffer, Harriet, came to help. On my advice, she taped the exhaust flaps from the bathroom temporarily, allowing us to have a decent sleep the second night. She was the only employee who was kind, helpful and who took actual notice of the issues. She saved the day and made the rest of our stay OK.

The holiday park itself, if it weren't for the abysmal customer service, is very much worth a visit, given its perfect location and comfortable caravans. One downside is that while there is plenty of electricity connections around the area (about 300 caravans with 5kW+ connections each), there is not one single EV charging point in the entire structure, not even at the entrance parking lot (yet, each caravan could easily provide one). It would be exceedingly easy to install even a small number of slow chargers for EV customers by the entrance if they cared (there were two electric cars during our stay, out of a dozen, plus one electric van from the holiday park itself).

All in all, a place to visit, if you manage to not have any issues that require to be actioned by their staff. Leaving a home cold by check-in time in the winter is however completely unacceptable. No offer was made to discount or partially refund our stay in the face of the issues we encountered, nor a...

DO NOT STAY HERE. I cannot express how terrible our experience was. As an avid camper I have stayed at many sites, this is by far the worst. My mum booked a sea view pitch as her van is 5.4 metres as per its official specifications. We arrived and reception measured her caravan as the correct size, she pitched up. Next morning we are all sat when two members of staff come and measure her van on one of their constant patrols. She asks why they are measuring again and they say they are checking the size, she explains it’s already been done. They then tell her she needs to move everything as her van can’t stay on that pitch, even though she was already told she could. She asks if this is some legal requirement, the staff tell her the vans need to be shorter than 5.5 metres so they don’t obstruct the view of the static vans behind- surely this is only affected by the height of the vans and several other vans had pop up sleeping areas so they were much more likely to obstruct any views. My mum has ptsd and this was all incredibly stressful for her, she was told her van was several different sizes depending on who measured it, even though the online specifications of her van are 5.4 metres, hence she was allowed to pitch up in the first place. Following this we felt that the wardens took a special liking to us and seemed to tell us off constantly.We were told off for driving 9 miles an hour despite their being no speed signs and many other things.

Lastly members of my party have invisible disabilities which involve them needing access to a toilet. The showers are cleaned between 11-12 but unlike all other sites we have ever stayed at, there is no other facilities at this time, other than some public toilets on the beach (which is very far away when someone needs urgent access). One of our party explained to the cleaner that they were going to have an incident and had a disability and the cleaner would not let them use any toilet. They then had to use the chemical disposal point rather than soil themselves. They returned feeling degraded and humiliated, I cannot believe that a big site like this does not have any provision for disabilities such as IBS or IBD that require full time access. We are now staying at highlands end round the corner and there is always a toilet open even during cleaning hours. It was so stressful and distressing that we could not wait to leave and go to another site. I would never go back here and actually would like money back for a holiday ruined. Lastly we camped in the rookery and it just seemed to be FULL of crows that covered everything in ginormous poo and were incredibly loud.

Other than location and the lovely staff in the pub, I do not have anything good to stay about this place. Don’t waste your money there are much better places.

Would highly recommended Highlands End for an...