Watergate Bay Hotel — Hotel in Great Britain

I stayed in one of the Village Apartments (Merryn) for 3 nights with my wife and 3 children (14,13 and 6) during the May school bank holiday 2024. We paid £975 per night (total 2,925). The location of the hotel on the beach is excellent and the apartment was spacious and nicely decorated with beautiful views of the bay. However, guests need to be aware that in my opinion the apartment is more self-catering rather than hotel type accommodation. The apartments are part of a complex of 20 properties. The majority of these are rented as self-catering units through another sister company (beachretreats). I think the hotel has just a few apartments that they offer through their site. I am now aware that we could have booked exactly the same property (next door) through beachretreats for the same week for 500 per night (3500 per week). I completely understand that by booking through the hotel you also have access to the hotel facilities and breakfast is included but in reality the facilities were worth little to us. Firstly, the apartments are too far away from the hotel (up a steep hill) to be able to access the facilities easily, particularly with young kids. On our first day the indoor pool was closed because a child had been sick in the pool. I understand that of course, but on our second and third day we also could not access the pool when we wanted because it was already full ! Similarly, my youngest son (6) wanted to use the games room in the evenings but we were told he couldn’t go in there from 5.30-9.30pm because we had not pre-booked. I am not sure how any family can know days (or even weeks) in advance when a 6 year old wants to play a game of table tennis or pool ! The cleaning of the apartment was poor. The rubbish in our bin wasn’t taken away. The towels weren’t changed and the beds weren’t even made daily. The only thing we were given in the room was half a pint of milk and a few teabags at the start of our stay ! My wife wanted to use the washing machine in the apartment but there was no washing powder. She asked at the reception but they couldn’t give us any so we had no choice but to drive to a supermarket in Newquay. The breakfast was good but it was extremely busy and nothing special. Remember we were paying almost £1,000 per night ! The apartment had only a kitchenette with just a few small plates, simple cutlery and a few glasses. Of course we were happy to eat out for every meal but as we hadn’t booked restaurants before we arrived we were never able to get a table in any of the 3 restaurants at a time that suited us. The apartments do not have room service. There isn’t even someone to help with taking bags up the hill. We are well used to paying these prices and often significantly more for luxury family hotels but on this occasion it just wasn’t worth it. To cap it all off there was even a mix-up on our bill when checking out and I was incorrectly invoiced an extra £105. It took 15 minutes to establish that a mistake had been made. The manager apologised of course but it still felt like a final “kick in the teeth” when leaving. I know the hotel will say that they sent emails advising us to book everything in advance as they were busy for the holiday week but that shouldn’t be necessary at that price point and it just isn’t practical with kids. The funny thing is that we would definitely stay again in the apartments but would of course book through beachretreats. It is effectively the same company and the properties are identical but with two big advantages; the price of course (!) but also they have proper kitchens and all the amenities you need for self-catering. That is what the village apartments are: great quality self-catering...

Well we have been visiting The Watergate Bay Hotel for about 14 years now. We have always loved it and it is still a lovely hotel in a fantastic location. Twice we have even bought vouchers as presents for family, on special occasions. However....... having just visited again on 29th-30th Oct '19 all our group (adults and teenagers) felt it has become a bit of victim of it's own success or maybe the success of the bay more generally.

The hotel is certainly not cheap and we expect and have generally got, not only a nice room in a great location but lovely shared spaces too. The Living Space has always been a great place, not just, or even primarily, to eat, but to hang out during the day reading, looking at the bay and relaxing. Similarly, the pool and spa lounge have been indulgent and chilled. However, on our latest visit, around meal times, The Living Space and, to a lesser extent, the spa frankly resembled an overflowing airport departure lounge in August rather than a relaxing space for hotel guests. There were far too many people often with piles of coats and bags and dogs!

It seems the hotel's public spaces are now being used by a large number of the people staying elsewhere in the bay as a public restaurant and swimming pool leaving almost no shared space in the hotel exclusively for guests paying to stay there. Maybe that wasn't a problem when the bay was less developed. Maybe it still isn't a problem outside of busy times. But, really, it should NEVER be a problem.

We noticed that each lunchtime a sign would eventually go up saying the Living Space was "full" and no longer accepting non-residents. But, by that time, the damage was done.

Frankly, the hotel, at least at weekends and holidays, needs to limit it's shared spaces to residents only. If they want to build another restaurant to serve all the people staying in the bay, great. But, please don't offer that service at the expense of hotel guests.

Smaller disappointments on our recent visit were people cleaning the windows of the main restaurant while people were sitting 5 feet away having breakfast (on the 31st) and someone cleaning the windows and noisily dragging around a bucket right at the start of the, supposedly relaxing, adults-only time in the pool. Surely these things could be done when the restaurant and pool were closed. This is certainly the kind of attention to detail I would expect for this standard of hotel and it seems the eye has been taken off the ball slightly.

So, I don't know what to say. We love the bay and still love what the hotel wants to be, but I'm honestly not sure we will return, at least during busy times. Sorry.

Previous review 4 years ago: Stunning bay! It always amazes me it is not better known. The hotel spa is great - lovely indoor pool overlooking the bay and peaceful treatment rooms. Very good for families - great living space whatever the weather. Both the hotel restaurant and the neighbouring "Fifteen" restaurant (by Jamie Oliver) are excellent, although Fifteen charges what feel like full-on "London/West-end" prices, which feels...

We have just left after an awful 3 night stay. I’m not sure either of us have ever been so underwhelmed and disappointed with a stay. It also echoes other reviews who say they take your money and then don’t care!

My husband booked a beach lofts which looks incredible online. However what we got was the Temu version.

On arrival our hearts sank at the room. The panoramic views were a narrow patio and the window bath wasn’t there. We called reception to say we were disappointed and she said she’d look to see if they had anything else. She never called back! I chased and she told me that all rooms vary and we shouldn’t have booked online we should have called. She said there was a room but only for 1 night and she wouldn’t let us take it. I said we were looking for other hotels so would likely leave. She said that we wouldn’t get any money back as it was outside of their “30 day cancellation policy” - well we weren’t cancelling we were mislead.

We couldn’t find a hotel so decided to sleep on it. We were told a Manager would contact us the next morning. We ordered room service which was freezing cold and inedible. It just kept getting worse.

The next day no one contacted us. We sent an email. This was then replied to on Sunday at Midday where she said we could leave and if they resold our room we’d get a refund. She don’t offer to refund our meal.

In the end at 3pm on Sunday a Manager came to speak to us. She was nice enough but obviously defensive of the hotel. She offered us a dinner in the awful restaurant but we declined. She then gave us pointers on using their website, not knowing my husband has been a computer programmer for 40 years so kind of knows what he’s doing. She also stated that we should have called as the rooms vary (not stated on website!) she said she would refund our bad meal and also look at a rate refund and let us know before we checked out. This wasn’t why we complained but at this point it was all that was available.

That “refund” on a £3k, 3 night stay ended up being a half bottle of wine and some chocolate buttons from the honesty bar. We just looked at each other and laughed.

When we tried to order breakfast we were told that they had stopped service as it was too busy. This was at 9am.

At this point we were just delighted to leave. The whole weekend had been a huge let down.

There needs to be some serious updates to the website. Clearer messaging and the staff need to be trained in actually caring about their guests. I travel a lot and it’s honestly the worst customer service I’ve received. It’s lackadaisical at best.

We stopped at Louma on our way home and oh my was it was just what we needed. The service was next level exceptional. We decided to add an extra night so we could end our...