De Vere Venues Gorse Hill, Woking, Surrey

5.0 / 5 Anonymous on 17/11/2009 (Solo leisure traveller)

 (108402721)

4.0 / 5 Diana [Hastings, GB] on 13/09/2009 (Solo business traveller)

Great location, friendly staff, quiet and clean

No signal for any of my phones!

Overall: Good experience and relaxing environment but the lack of signal for mobile was a problem  (108620699)

4.0 / 5 Anonymous on 26/08/2009 (Mature couple)

Lovely room [once we changed -as no air too hot]Friendly staff. We actually felt quite relaxed and rested from our stay [apart from the Saturday night].We had 4 nights there .

The initial room was too hot and airless -no fans available [outside temp 25deg] Saturday night there was a wedding party from 4pm -later they had a band/music to midnight [definite problem] As our room faced the courtyard and it was hot [28deg to 20 outside] we needed the window open [no fans].Some guests were outside drinking/shouting/trying to sing/drunken comments etc from 10pm to 3.30 am.Complaints to reception met with we have been out to them and have asked them to move but we received abuse. Now we had paid to stay and were not staff,[We rang them 22.45 and 2 am] Noisy then as some came upstairs and banging of doors and shouting in the corridors from 2am. We slept from 3 am to 7 am Saturday night only!

Overall: We did enjoy our stay despite Saturday night.We had not been made aware of a wedding party to midnight etc. Asking for a reduction or compensation we were offered a free evening meal for two but as we were visiting family this was useless.In the end we were given a reduction of £45 off the meal bill [we paid for 2 instead of 4 breakfasts plus room service] No accommodation reduction was offered .  (107722335)

4.9 / 5 Anonymous on 23/08/2009 (Group of adult friends)

Lovely hotel, plenty of room, lovely peaceful surroundings, friendly staff, helpful staff.

Overall: Comfortable short stay.  (108752002)

4.3 / 5 Anonymous on 10/08/2009 (Solo leisure traveller)

lovely breakfast and beautiful surroundings

Overall: clean room and very large bathroom, tea and coffee making facilities  (108460949)

2.3 / 5 Anonymous on 20/07/2009 (Solo leisure traveller)

Garden/grounds Clean bathroom and large bath towel Cheerful receptionist

Lack of control over guests at night (wedding reception). Wedding receptions (two nights in a row). Unappetizing breakfasts (on a par with Army food I had in the Army in 1975). Poorly prepared dinner (I'd fire the cook). Improperly trained staff -- unable to control guests during a wedding reception Dangerous vehicular exit from the hotel (blind spots). Small point (but small details count in hotels): the room key came attached to a particularly cheap plastic tag -- something you'd see on the key to the garden shed. Did not receive a newspaper on one of the days requested (and no spare when I asked at the front desk). Fire the cook. He or she can't.

Overall: Disappointing! I will not book DeVere hotels again or recommend any to my fellow travellers. This particular hotel had the feel of a training centre for staff and in my opinion not good value for money. At times I felt as if I were living through an episode of "Fawlty Towers". For example, I turned in early on Saturday evening since I had to get to Heathrow early the next morning -- only to be brought out of a deep sleep by the wedding reception Disc Jockey barking like a dog (literally) on an over-ampped sound system. Then the children started runing up and down the corridors slamming doors and shrieking (one actually ran though my room service tray outside my door knocking over the china and glass with a crash and kept going). I called the front desk a couple of times to see what could be done and he just sounded resigned rather than motivated to fix what most well-run hotels would do easily. The final straw for me was hearing one child right outside my door proclaim in a particularly loud voice at one o'clock in the morning that, "Mummy and Daddy are quite drunk" ... ergo no sober supervision evident for what could be a brilliant cast for a remake of "Lord of the Flies in Surrey". Perhaps I should have followed suit and drunk myself insensible as well. The quality of prepared meals reminded me of my time in the British Army and boarding schools -- utilitarian and unappealing. Thank God for the pubs nearby! I really think the worst aspect of my stay was being displaced by back to back wedding receptions (no notice, no warning to the poor hotel guests who had to endure this experience -- although since I already had a foretaste of the quality of the resaturant food, this forced me to drive out into town in pursuit of a decent meal. I have seen a lot of life -- I have spent 30 years in Army and Navy, so I am pretty chilled about where I get a place to put my head down, but this one stay really irked me and I would not make the mistake of staying at another Devere hotel again. Perhaps this is the normal standard for British hotels these days, and if so, I'm dismayed.  (107643169)