Druids Glen Resort

This past weekend, I celebrated my daughter and son-in-law’s 20th wedding anniversary at the Druids Glen Hotel & Golf Resort with a large party of 21 people. The hotel's interior is wonderfully bright, but the staff are brighter still. The service culture makes you feel like you are being welcomed as a trusted friend, with every single staff member greeting us with a genuine smile and incredible kindness. From start to finish, the team, the facilities, and the food all get a 100% mark from me. Highly recommended for any special family occasion

Never 5 stars This was my first visit to DGH after my wife’s initial visit some 3 years ago. We are both in our advanced years and seasoned travellers, who both enjoy excellent hospitality, being happy to pay for the privilege. This trip was also to play the Druids Glen GC, which I will review separately. Initial impressions on the hotel were not great tbh. We were hungry and headed straight into the Garden Room restaurant at around 2:30pm. In most 5 stars (even less) when you are greeted at the entrance and shown to a table I would expect the staff to ask me if we were eating / like drink etc, and presented with a menu. We got none of these and ended up having to signal someone over after a couple of minutes. The food was acceptable albeit I’d say average at best. We then headed to our room, which was large but looked tired, with wardrobe doors that failed to shut (letting light out at night) a very small corner shower, which made it difficult to even bend down to wash your feet. It had a fixed shower head which leaked out a fine spray at the joint. There was only shower gel and shampoo, no conditioner or body lotion, which should be standard for 5 stars. Very little by way of other small bathroom giveaways save for a shower cap. The over the bath shower holder was also very loose. The tiles covering both walls and floor looked relatively new yet it appeared they had left in very old bathroom fittings, shower, bath n toilet. The shower cubicle bi fold door was almost unusable (stiff and came out of its track) The TV whilst large in size offered very basic channels, no Sky and the channel guide didn’t load well and channel kept freezing. Not all the lamps were controlled by the bed, which meant you had to get out of bed to turn off some of them, minor point yet annoying all the same. The hairdryer was weirdly located at the bottom of the wardrobe and Mrs Lowe had to sit on the floor to dry her hair. The bed was comfortable. Breakfast was buffet style and well presented, with lots of choice however tables we not set correctly, missing cutlery, salt and pepper and butter. You needed to toast and eggs if you didn’t want scrambled or fried, which was fine albeit Mrs Lowes beans order never materialised. We also again had difficulty getting the basic service of tea / coffee having to struggle to signal staff over. There were plenty of staff throughout the hotel / eating areas and all were extremely polite / pleasant. However they were in need of some serious training as far as service goes. We experienced a second poor service during another afternoon in the Garden restaurant, where staff were stood around and/or doing task yet totally unaware of us wanting service. I think the whole staff training issue was confirmed to me upon checkout, when I wasn’t even asked how my stay was , have you enjoyed your stay? Absolutely nothing! I am not aware of the DG GC is run by the same company as the hotel, which is a short 3 min complimentary shuttle bus trip away. The reason I mention this is the fact we ate at the DG Clubhouse on 2 occasions and the service was exemplary with a young lad called Olly who IMO should be in charge of training the main hotel staff as he knew exactly what good service looked like. I would also like to feed back that the complimentary shuttle bus was unavailable after playing golf, when we were soaked to the skin and we had to ride in 2 golf carts ensuring we were even wetter and colder, if indeed that was possible. I’m guessing this hotel was The Bee’s Knee’s some years ago, sad to say I think it’s seen better days, needs some serious money spending on a complete refurbishment in order to class itself as a five star resort, which it certainly is NOT, I’d give it 4 at Best. I have also noted a number of other TA reviews stating the same ie ‘tired looking’ Come on Neville Hotels (brand who owns DGH) get your act together as people expect better.

Slightly off the quality of other 5-stars. Very good hotel but lacks that extra bit. Staff are obliging, but the morale seems somehow low and this comes across. Garden lunch menu was good but limited.