Gleddoch Golf & Spa Resort — Hotel in Great Britain

Let's start with the positives, and there are several. Clean, good size rooms, excellent and challenging golf (hire a buggy!), lovely pool and spa, location fantastic with excellent views over Dumbarton Castle and Renfrewshire. The bar staff are excellent, one in particular who makes fab cocktails. So - for a 60th Birthday treat, we booked in here for 3 nights. We booked the restaurant for breakfast and evening meal; being a Golf and Spa resort, I had figured the food would be decent. The Vista restaurant has terrific views and is billed as fine dining.

It absolutely is not. The only "fine dining" thing about it is the price they try and charge.

On arrival we were shown to our table, which had a weird plant in dirty water as a centrepiece. Every table had a different plant, also in dirty water. There was no wine list. The menu was a wonkily photocopied sheet of A4. It was so noisy I could barely hear my wife speak across the table. Staff were rushing around, the manager was serving, disinfecting tables and generally trying to be everywhere. Stuff was being dropped. It was like Fawlty Towers. We felt a great deal of sympathy for the manager at how understaffed it was. The place had the feel of a school canteen.

Our waitress was very pleasant, but young and clearly untrained. Silly things like bringing the water glasses with her fingers inside the glass and just leaving them on the table in a stack. I had to go through the wine on an iPad, 4 at a time. In the end, I decided on a glass of Argentinian Malbec to have with the 10 oz (medium, please) Sirloin steak main course costing £32 (Sirloin? Fine dining? Really?). My wife ordered a pan fried Trout fillet.

There was a long wait for the main course and our server came to apologise; she said there was a bit of a mix up but she had chased it up. I asked again for the wine.

After a few more minutes they arrived. My wife's trout was so overcooked it was bone dry and hard. My medium sirloin was cremated; tough, flavourless and not in any way tender.

Both dishes were sent back. We were offered replacements but by this time it was too late to eat for us, we'd waited so long for the main course. We asked for the main courses to be taken off the bill but were still hungry, so had cheese boards.

Just after my cheese board arrived, so did my wine. Around us, there were also tables sending their food back or complaining.

With our two meals both being sent back, surely the manager would be over for a word? An apology? Nope; he never came over once.

We left the restaurant and saw him on the stairs. My wife said that it was poor, but acknowledged they were understaffed. "We're not" he interrupted, "We're just very busy". In which case we said that it wasn't good enough, he simply said, quite curtly, "Well I'm very sorry" and just headed off up the stairs. "Clearly not" said my wife. "No, I am" was his response and again he headed off. No offer to speak to us later, no mention of anything to try and make it better. In the hospitality industry, that is so incredibly rude. You cannot talk to your disgruntled customers like that.

This was so "Chalk and Cheese" from the rest of the hotel that I went to the front desk to ask if it was part of the hotel or franchised. No, it was part of the hotel.

Is the restaurant manager also the hotel manager? It turns out he is, and he must either be a control freak or is being unfairly put upon by the owners. There is no way that laying and disinfecting tables will be in his job description, yet that is what he was doing and yet he said they were not understaffed. He should be overseeing, making sure there are no problems and putting things right when they go wrong.

So, we cancelled all our forward bookings and instead ate in a restaurant close by called "Coast". Absolutely first class. We have had all our meals there.

It's a shame, because due to the manager's rudeness, we won't recommend or be back. But if you do come, just...

Well where do I start! Booked this hotel through an itison deal and paid £179 for an executive room, dinner and breakfast. I had booked it for my boyfriends birthday as a gift and we had also booked a couples massage for the day we arrived (29/08). However, the day before check in we were informed that they had to cancel our massages. No reason was given however my partner did ask and they told us it was due to a member of staff calling in sick. Stuff like this can't be predicted and although we were a little disappointed we look forward to our stay.

The hotel is in a beautiful location and that's where it ends. I checked in online so it was a straight forward check in when we got there. We made our breakfast reservation (we had already made a dinner one) and then we were informed on where to go to find our room and also the restaurant and spa. We were booked into room 62. On arrival into the room, at first glance it looked nice. The bed was large and the bathroom looked new. However it soon came apparent that the room was in a desperate state of some work. There was a hole in the carpet, 2 of the ceiling lights didn't work and just flickered, there was some white paint all over the wallpaper (perhaps the ceiling was painted after the wallpaper?), the woodwork was scratched and dirty. The glass table in the room was dirty and the toilet had obviously not been cleaned since the previous guests as there were marks in the bowl. On top of these issues, the iron plug was bent so couldn't be used, a battery from the safe was missing so also couldn't be used, there was no WIFI in the room and the TV remote was very temperamental. We spoke to reception to ask about the WIFI, the TV remote and the toilet. We were advised that these issues would be passed to housekeeping.

We were unsure how to use the facilities as there was no paper guest directory just the information on the TV which we couldn't use due to the remote. We decided to go for a walk to see the restaurant and spa. When we got to the spa reception, there were a group of workers behind the desk we were standing at and they finished their own conversation before seeing to us. They advised us that as we were guests we would need to come down to the spa in our slippers and robes. We then went back to the room to find no robes in the room. My partner called reception and asked about robes they said they would get housekeeping to bring some. Half an hour later we didn't have the robes. We then decided to go down to reception and ask about the robes and we were informed that there was an issue with the delivery and the delivery driver had went to the wrong hotel. With this information we went back to the spa to let them know the situation. They said that they hadn't heard of there being an issue but they could give us a key to use the lockers in the changing room.

The spa is okay. No very 4*. There was a kids swimming lesson going on when we arrived so we avoided that pool and went outside. Really nice view and the hot tub was clean. We stayed for around 45 minutes before heading back to the room to get ready for dinner.

Arrived back at the room to find nothing that we had highlighted to reception had been dealt with (surprise, surprise). After getting ready for dinner we headed to the restaurant.

My partner spent the whole night being violently sick and then I started being sick the following morning. We didn't make our breakfast reservation as we were so unwell. On check out we informed the receptionist about our experience.

I have been dealing with management and they have been incredibly helpful with resolving this for us which I am grateful for. Not a good experience but glad that it has...

If I could give zero stars then I honestly would. Came for an overnight to celebrate our anniversary and it just went from bad to worse. Got to our room and it was lovely, then we realised we were put next to a room with kids and screaming baby. Went to the spa for it to absolutely swamped with people which is fine it was a Saturday. The outdoor Jacuzzi most of the jets were not working and also there was a group of women inside the hot tub consuming their own alcohol in glass bottles which is a serious serious health and safety issue. Why didn't the spa manager pick up on this on the cameras they have at reception? Went for dinner, got our starter which was lovely then we waited a good 20minutes for our main. My partner had fish and chips, the chips were burnt to a crisp! My burger was not the best pleasing either. We then waited 30 minutes for anyone to actually aknowledge we had finnished our main then we were asked if we wanted desert which we stupidly said yes to. The desert menus took a good 15mins to come to us so we then ordered. I ordered a SELECTION of ice cream and my partner ordered sticky toffee pudding. My SELECTION of ice cream came as 3 small MELTED scoops of tablet ice cream, that is not a selection that is one flavour! Which I was charged £5 for, daylight robbery. We then left to go to the dram bar but we were not happy at all after discussing the length of time we actually spent waiting on food and actually being in the restraunt, we were there from 7:15pm till 9.30pm and not by choice. So before we went to the dram bar I spoke with reception and raised all of our concerns which we were told higher management would deal with in the morning but in the mean time they would cover drinks in the dram bar and give us 2 day pass for the use of facilities, which was fine as that rectified our issue. To clarify we had 2 drinks each in the dram bar. The next morning at breakfast it was just dreadful. We got in to the restraunt only for the women to say oh sorry none of our tables are clean hang on. That was fine we were then seated. Jams, milk and sugar not replenished. My partner requested tea, no mug, saucer or spoon to drink it from! We then plated up the buffet breakfast which was the best of a bad bunch. The only thing I could eat that actually looked appetizing was scrambled egg, beans and toast. My partner then found a huge long dark hair in his breakfast just before finishing which meant he did not want to finish it at all. So we were more than ready to see what the duty manager had to say. Mathew the manager took all of our concerns and wrote them down and said he would get back to us. He got back to us with a basic bog standard response and that they would cover lunch as a sorry. We paid £189 for the overall experience and I'm sorry that is just not good enough, why would we want lunch after all the issues we faced with the restraunt? I would not recomend this establishment to anyone. I have had better stays and food at the premier in and that is no lie as we have stayed at various premier in locations. This hotel and customer service needs improving majorly. I assume the manager will respond and say I declined their offer which is true because i won't be stepping foot back in...