2 years ago, my boyfriend and I had an amazing experience at the Christchurch Harbour Hotel and I wrote a rave review on here based on that experience. We had no hesitation in booking again last week for a last minute one night getaway as we'd had such a good time.

I'm afraid to say we were quite disappointed this time around and our experience certainly matched some of the less positive reviews on here.

Firstly, the hotel room - we went for a bronze room this time. The room on the ground floor overlooked the car park, but we weren't worried, as we weren't there for long. The room was beautifully decorated and very well appointed. I was surprised at how similar the bronze room was to the gold room we had last time, the difference in price must reflect the lovely harbour view you get with the gold rooms.

The bed was so comfortable and the room was a nice temperature. We weren't disturbed at all by noise from outside, but previous reviewers are right, the walls are paper thin. I was in the bathroom and heard someone next door throwing up quite clearly :-/ not nice.

Also a squeaky door in the corridor that just needed a little oil disturbed our sleep from about 6am onwards.

We used the spa but felt slightly put off by the broken water feature in the spa area that was emitting a strong damp, sewagey smell, and the salt room wasn't working and there was no sign up saying that.

There was only about 15 of us in the spa area but it did feel very crowded, there isn't a huge amount of seating there if you want to relax after a swim.

Still, we enjoyed ourselves and was looking forward to another amazing meal like the last one we had. However, we were disappointed again when we walked into the restaurant.

Upon entering the restaurant we stood at the entrance and were ignored by two members of the team walking past us, so we stood for a while and then realised that two members of staff manning the desk were staring at us, so we walked over to them and asked to be shown to our seat. I found it strange that we weren't greeted at all.

The deal that we went for both times - a one night stay including dinner and breakfast used to include a three course meal from the normal restaurant menu, however this has now been changed to a three course meal from the 'Table d'hote' menu which is more limited. It states at the bottom of the menu that there is a £28 per person limit for food and there are options to upgrade to the normal menu for a considerable cost e.g. an extra £7.50 for a main course. The £28 limit is also new.

The menu itself was poorly presented, with a number of words misspelt. Although fairly humorous, this isn't something I would expect from a 2AA Rosette restaurant.

We chose from the set menu, my boyfriend decided not to have a starter, and I had a vegetable terrine which was nice but not exciting. The free bread was DELICIOUS though.

We both ordered the whole roast plaice for our main course. I cut into mine and found under the flesh a weird slimy thing that looked like two conjoined fish bodies without the heads or fins. My first thought was it was something the plaice had eaten and not had the chance to digest before being caught, so I called the waiter over and asked him if it was meant to be there.

He looked at it with confusion and then took my plate to the kitchen. A moment later he returned and said that it's definitely meant to be there but he doesn't know what it is! This was not reassuring to me at all! If he had come back and said "I've asked the chef and it's the.....and it adds to the flavour" or something then I would have felt better about it but I asked for something else instead.

After taking my plate away again, the manager came to the table and said 'I see you found the roe, don't worry we'll get you the beef instead" and at that point I was able to say ahhhh, that's what it was! However, on googling it, I can't find anything to do with plaice roe that looks like what I found in my food :-/ however I may be wrong. My main bugbear was about the way the waiter dealt with it.

The beef I had in place was average. The dessert (chocolate cheesecake and orange sorbet) was absolutely delicious, I wish I'd had three of them instead!

As we hadn't gone over our £28pp limit due to my boyfriend not having a starter, we ordered coffee and petit fours to take to our room. The next day at check out we were charged for them anyway! I didn't complain as there was a queue and for £3.50, I just didn't think it was worth it. I did feel that the hotel could have easily supplemented the coffee for the starter we didn't have and with very little cost to them would have improved customer satisfaction.

We paid an extra £3 per person to have breakfast delivered to our room the next morning. We ordered toast, danish pastries and croissants as well as cereal, fruit and homemade granola.

The granola was nice but the fruit salad wasn't fresh and between the two of us we had to share the one miniature pain au chocolat and miniature danish pastry we were given! Not impressed!

Overall, we left feeling like the attention to detail was lacking, the food and service let what is a beautiful and opulent hotel in a gorgeous location down and we are unlikely to return again.

We stayed with my brother and his wife for one night on a visit to Christchurch to celebrate my uncle's 90th birthday. We knew the hotel quite well under its previous ownership and name (Avonmouth) as we lived and worked in the area for many years up to the 1980s. This however was our first stay after the reburbishment and new ownership.
We thought the standard of accomodation and service was very good although the character of the hotel had changed from a relatively quiet and smaller operation to a much busier and larger spa facility. Nevertheless we very much enjoyed or short stay and, because of its excellent postion close to Christchurch Harbour and Mudeford Quay, we were able to walk to revisit our old haunts.
My brother did experience a problem when the power in his room failed at around 11:30 pm. However the staff on duty quickly arranged a transfer to another (better) room and offered a discount when we checked out.
Overall we thought the prices were on the high side but still reasonable value particularly if we had had time to use the spa.

I had a wonderful treat on the 2 January 2012 we stayed in a sea facing room on the corner with 3 windows all of which had a beautiful view. The bed was amazingly compfy, shower was gorgeous with really great lighting in the bathroom. Our meal was of a very high standard and even though I am allergic to nuts and dairy and don't eat meat it was no problem and my meal and wine was perfect.
All of the staff were extremly helpful and curteous, the spa was a little small and crowded on bank holiday Monday but empty on Tuesday morning, all treatments were fantastic and I left feeling like I had had a really good rest and a treat!!
Thank you x

My family booked for a celebration evening meal. The whole meal was very disappointing. It was more like reheated lunch food. After writing a polite email to the Manager had no reply and since reading this I know I will not get one