The Gleneagles Hotel — Hotel in Great Britain

The grounds & estate are beautiful - if you like Scottish scenery this is for you.

ROOM (Braid Estate) Pros - huge room, large bed, mini fridge with complimentary bottled water & milk, Nespresso machine, tea & coffee & shortbread. The bathroom had underfloor heating, double sink, power shower, separate toilet cubicle, toiletries, large bath tub, robes & slippers. laptop sized safe, fireplace, big tv, sofa & footstool, pillow menu - everything you would expect to be provided from a hotel with 5 stars. The room was very comfortable, clean and in excellent condition.

Cons - A couple of our towels had holes in them - as per pictures. Our door was left open on TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS after housekeeping had visited our room which we reported immediately to Reception.

We were charged on our bill for something that was complimentary.

American Bar - classy, cosy atmosphere. Good mocktails

Garden Cafe - fruit smoothies £8 & delicious. £4 for a 500ml bottle of sparkling water for takeaway!

Century Bar - huge bar with lots of seating and dim lighting. Nice, however we felt there was a lack of atmosphere.

Birnam Restaurant - beautiful we were seated in an area that looks like you are outside which is nice though the lighting is a tad too dark. We had a wonderful waiter Glen who went above & beyond. The chicken and Birnam salad were delicious.

The Dormy Restaurant - poor slow service - the young girls seemed more interested in chatting amongst one other (waited 10 mins for a glass of tap water & there were only 2 - 3 other tables occupied), the food was average at best and not a patch on the food served in the Birnam though the price almost the same! The chicken ordered was rather dry.

SPA & GYM Pros - clean with 2 large saunas, steam room, adult pool, outside jacuzzi, & a large pool area for families with a small indoor jacuzzi, fresh drinking water and plenty of towels available, relaxation loungers and good atmospheric lighting.

Cons - the spa & gym is NOT residents only so the majority of the facilities are utilised by locals with gym membership and they do really take up most of the space there as well as being fairly rude when they realise you’re not a local. We were there on a weekday and it was busy so can’t imagine it at the weekend!

For the size of the estate the Gym is rather small - has decent enough equipment as far as hotel gyms go. Same issue with the spa it’s full of locals who generally take up most of the gym area so need to plan your time well (don’t go first thing in the morning)

BREAKFAST Pros - lovely selection of salmon, honeys, jams, pastries, fruit and hot food typical of a Scottish breakfast (eggs, beans, mushrooms, sausages etc).

Lovely small areas for each section of food; nuts area, caprese salad bar, dried fruits, even an alcohol/ Bloody Mary bar. Cute area for children to make milkshakes and their own fruit bowls. There is a vegetarian section set up at the back of the buffet room where you can find the tattie scones. There’s an omelette station with various fillings made fresh to order.

Cons - Waitress forgot our sparkling water when we ordered and we had to repeat ourselves several times to saying no for toast. (Please just write down an order if you can’t remember)

The bottled juices in the breakfast bar look home made but when you ask they were actually not made on site and just decanted into bottles to make it look fresh - only / of the smoothies made in house so do ask if you are unsure.

No boiled eggs available.

Avocado nowhere to be seen - you have to order this if you want it - don’t ask at the breakfast buffet they are reluctant!

lack of veg/salad

The staff look as though they are being paid to smile at you - they are almost over the top with niceness but when it comes to actually actioning a request they’re useless.

reported the issues to management (which is difficult to get contact details for after being given 3 different emails we finally got the correct one!) who offered a complimentary stay in a standard room! No thanks - We will never return and...

We have had many great stays at Gleneagles over the years, I proposed here in 2018 so it has become a special place to us. We finally got married on the 3rd of September and with the current foreign travel restrictions it was a no brainer that we would have our honeymoon here.

Welcome, We drove straight to the front door where we were promptly greeted by a porter who helped unload our cases onto the trolley, he did offer to park the car but due to covid I politely refused. The check in process was fine, we requested a specific room at the time of booking that we had stayed in before and this was the room we received.

Room, As mentioned we had previously stayed in the room before and it was absolutely perfect, couldn’t fault it. There was a small bottle of champagne in the room from the guest relations manager (Thank you!) a nice touch. There was also another bottle of champagne received from a friend who had called ahead and paid for this to be placed in our room… more about that further in this review.

Food, We booked the Strathearn restaurant for dinner on the first and second evening then Andrew Fairlie on the last evening. Strathearn on night 1 – We were booked for 20:30, when we arrived there was a fair sized que so had to wait an additional 10mins before we were eventually seated. The waitress introduced herself, gave us menus and a glass of tap water then said the sommelier would be over soon with the wine list. We sat for around 20 mins drinking our tap water before I eventually managed to flag down a waitress to order a drink. We were told again, the sommelier will be over shortly… guess what, he never arrived. Another waiter came over to take our food order and again said someone will be over to take our drinks order. By 21:20 I had had enough and went to the front desk to ask to see the manager and explained my frustration. When I got back to my seat the waitress was attempting to serve our starters… completely unacceptable, we hadn’t even ordered a drink yet! Eventually we finally managed to order drinks but by this point the whole experience was ruined. The menu was also very limited only 3 starters and 3 mains to choose from (Covid outbreak in the kitchen with chefs isolating I guess but nobody confirmed this) if this was the case then the restaurant shouldn’t have been open in my opinion. Night 2 – Strathearn again, we ordered drinks in the bar and took them through with us this time as to avoid a repeat of the previous night. Same limited menu with the exception of roast. Night 3 – We were booked into Andrew Fairly but received a phone call to say the restaurant was closed due to a covid outbreak within the team, disappointed but completely understandable in these times. We therefore opted to try the birnam brasserie since we felt we already exhausted the limited Strathearn menu. Service was spot on, couldn’t fault it, the starters were lovely. I ordered a medium steak for mains, what I was presented with was a over charred cold (Almost felt frozen) steak. I spoke to the waiter and he agreed that it wasn’t medium and would take it back to the kitchen. In my opinion the steak hadn’t been left out the fridge long enough before it was cooked. The same steak was then re delivered to me even more charred and still as raw in the middle. I again returned and asked for something different. I sound like a very fussy diner here and can assure you I am far from it.

Checkout We were presented with our bill to review… The bottle of Champaign that our friend had called to pre pay had somehow made its way onto our bill, unacceptable. We were also charged for someone else’s meal/drinks who had put our room number down. The guy at the desk went to the office to retrieve the receipts and it was clearly forged by another guest. I would suggest a more secure method is used when guests charge to their rooms as this is unacceptable and wasted 15 minutes of our time and left us leaving with a bad impression...

Planning a WEDDING or CONFERENCE here? Read this FIRST.

My Scottish ceilidh band (The Jiggers) plays at venues all over the UK, and in Scotland we have played all the big hotels, so we have as particular insight into both the "above stairs" and "below stairs" culture. I'd like to talk a little about that, because it's a curious experience that you might be interested in. Gleneagles is world-renowned, so what can you expect from a place like this? It is obviously going to be more expensive than most, so what do you get for that money?

I can't give an extensive review- I didn't stay here, play 18 holes, or even see the full extent of the place. It is a BIG hotel, and has lots of annexes, club houses and little hamlets of residences, restaurants and bars.

Some hotels have a big tip for themselves. Doormen who look you up and down, waiting staff who are a bit inexperienced and gormless, security staff who treat visiting delivery people like dirt. What you feel at Gleneagles is that everyone respects you. The manner of the concierge when we arrived was polite, friendly and respectful. I didn't know where the gate for service providers was so I drove to the front of the hotel. Some places would be sniffy about having you pull in at the front next to the classic cars and chauffeur driven limousines, but that's not how we were received. I'm not someone who can afford to stay at a place like this under normal circumstances, so driving in, it's easy to feel intimidated and perhaps even a little defensive. But when you are treated with respect, it changes the whole aspect.

This same level of respect was accorded throughout the hotel. People stepping aside in corridors, directing us, providing security passes- there is simply an air of professionalism that exists equally in the back kitchens and in the "front of house".

If you're running a hotel, and want it to impress people, everything should flow out of this simple principle of respect, and that's the thing Gleneagles gets right. Obviously they have a high standard of presentation- everything is clean, plush and classy- the food is very good and the overall impression is of a hotel from a bygone era- discreet, considerate and not trying to be flashy. They seem experienced at delivering what their clients want.

Some venues have staff whose whole demeanour changes as soon as they are behind the service doors- like it's a real effort to hold up that fake, well behaved appearance. If the hotel gets the hiring and training wrong, and doesn't treat their staff right, this kind of attitude can become pervasive. But my strong sense was that this was NOT the case at Gleneagles. Maybe they pay the staff more, or give them better training, or just hire more selectively. But my sense was that they were happy to be working there, and that transforms the place in a profound way.

The security and signing-in process was a little more involved at this venue, but I did feel like I wanted to get on board with their way of doing things- delivering a classy, considerate service.

We played the ceilidh for a conference held by the Ottowan tourism board, for around 80 guests, and the ballroom was very elegant and great for a ceilidh (which went down a storm, of course!). Mirrored walls added a sense of space and good high ceilings too with a good size of stage. It's a very versatile space, and there are other larger suites for conferences or weddings, and the hotel is laid out in such a way that several events could be happening at once without really knowing about each other.

Gleneagles is the hotel that organisations choose when they want guests to feel appreciated and respected. Good money has been paid to host them there, but you feel that this is just the cost of doing business in a way that allows them to offer a high standard to...