The Portland Spa Hotel

The Portland Spa is quoted as being a 4 star hotel. I can tell you straight away the reason for this is the rooms. The décor is modern and rich, Tv’s are flat screen and beds are huge. Bathrooms are designer and towels are fluffy. That’s pretty much where the good stuff ends.
I wish I could be more complimentary but this hotel is like staying in a cross between ‘The Shining’ and the mental hospital from ‘Gothika’.
The building used to be a Naval base and the institutional air is still very much in evidence (and the smell of disinfectant — where do public buildings get that stuff from??).
To be more descriptive this hotel sits on a kind of complex (read ‘looks like a prison from the outside’). This includes a restaurant which as been situated on the site for some time, a leisure centre with a gym, pool, conference facilities and spa facilities, a business centre and a hotel. The hotel has only recently opened and local taxi drivers have no clue where the entrance is — which is how we discovered the rather pleasant mze of corridors which make up the building. We were willing to forgive this experience until we realised this is actually where you are expected to walk on a daily basis.
To get to the restuarant (where breakfast is served) you have to walk down said institutional corridor which is deserted and frankly creepy.
The restaurant itself –well Gordon Ramsay would be having fits if this place cropped up on Kitchen Nightmares — ridiculously rich, over fiddled with mains, everything with a chive balanced on it and ’ vegetarian option available on request’ (i.e. we will root around in the fridge until we find some veg and cheese and call it a vegetable crumble — no joke –it was vile) it’s like being stuck in 1976 (don’t even start me on the room service menu). That’s not even mentioning the fact that they enforce you having a drink in the ‘waiting area’ even though the restaurant is deserted — someone should tell them it’s not Claridges.
Breakfast isn’t much better — silver service at 7am (JUST GIVE ME MY COFFEE!!!) is so unecessary, and it took about 15 minutes to get my order of toast to our table.
I’m sure part of the reason our stay was so disappointing was that this hotel is not set up at all for business travellers, and it was out of season. But business travellers can be the lifeblood of a place like this in the Winter months — something which the ownr of this hotel seems unaware of (broandband is wired on a 4 inch cable and is £6 an hour for example), they’re also relatively easy to please as they’re not spending their own money. However bad service (don’t even get me started on the guy at reception), silly restaurants, rubbish room service menu and costly wi-​fi are instantly going to put these lucrative guests off.
Aside from all this the Portand Spa is miles from anywhere and just shy of £140 a night with meals costing £20 for two courses and breakfast costing an additional £10 each (so not worth it!). Oh and the gym doesn’t open until 7am.
Everyone feels differently about hotels — it depends what you’re looking for in many ways but for menever againjust. never again.