"We recently stayed at The Cottage in the Wood in the Malverns and, overall, had an enjoyable stay. The setting is beautiful and the hotel has a lovely atmosphere, but there were a couple of aspects of our experience that I found disappointing.
Before our stay, I tried to book dinner in the hotel restaurant, only to be told that they were fully booked and couldn’t accommodate us. As hotel guests, I found this rather surprising, particularly as dining is clearly an important part of the experience offered by the hotel. I called back to explain my concerns and, to their credit, they did manage to find us a table.
However, we were told that we had to dine at 6pm, which felt unnecessarily early. What was particularly frustrating was that, during our meal, the restaurant appeared far from full, and it seemed there would have been no difficulty accommodating us at a later time.
I also have to mention the coffee, which unfortunately was very poor on both occasions we had it — after dinner and again at breakfast. For a hotel of this standard, I would expect considerably better-quality coffee, particularly at breakfast.
I appreciate that restaurants need to manage bookings and staffing, but I do feel that hotel guests should be given reasonable consideration when it comes to dining arrangements. The fact that we were initially told there was no availability, only to find that there appeared to be plenty of space when we actually ate,"