The Goodwood Hotel Review

Last month, husband whisked me away for a weekend, sans kids – which hasn’t happened in years! The destination was Chichester and he got tickets for Anna Karenina in the Festival Theatre for us. What a great weekend we had! I was truly spoilt for my birthday, my batteries are recharged and it was overall such a wonderful weekend, that I thought, I must share a review of the Goodwood Hotel. I took many photos of the beautiful estate, dined in the restaurant and had a facial treatment as well in the spa – so I have an all-round review to share with anyone, who’s thinking about staying at the Goodwood Hotel, dining in the Farmer, Butcher, Chef or going for a day-spa experience. But because the lots of photos – I’m going to have to break the review into two posts – and this one will be about our stay in the Goodwood Hotel. Rooms, breakfast, amenities. Whilst in an another article, I will share about its main restaurant: Farmer, Butcher, Chef. They both deserve their own articles.

About Goodwood Estate

Owned by the royal descendants of the estate’s first owner, King Charles II, the hotel, cottages spa, restaurants, the Goodwood House and golf courses form a very luxurious sporting and hospitality estate today. (When I say “sport” it basically means racing. “Sports” like car racing and horse racing aren’t sports in my view, no idea why people still call them sports. It’s just racing. And betting. I don’t like either of them and to be honest, I especially despise horse racing because it’s plain animal abuse.) It’s a huge estate (11,000 acres), with different buildings housing the hotel, picturesque cottages are also available to book and the Goodwood House itself, that’s build in 1617 where visitors can view the state apartments, the art collection, have afternoon tea or even organise a wedding. There is a myriad of different, manly experiences to book as well from flying a Cessna through clay shooting to various racing car experiences as well. The estate hosts the famous Festival of Speed, Goodwood Revival and Qatar Goodwood Festival. None of these things are really for me. Even Goodwood Revival sounds like an old car festival for rich, old blokes collecting them (they even sell you classic car insurance off the Goodwood estate website, not even kidding!) and vintage fashion talks for their wives hiding it behind the thin veil of “reuse-reduce-recycle” wish-wash. The link to Qatar with the country’s still atrocious human rights records doesn’t even deserve a comment. 

But there’s so much more to Goodwood Estate, luckily – if you shift your focus from the above. The hotel part of the estate has so much to offer. And it’s beautiful, fun and tries to break some of the ties with the past but in a quiet, respectful, polite way, still holding onto what’s useful and tasteful. Old ways are sometimes the best ways: the zero waste restaurant being a prime example to that. 

The Hotel Room

I will start here, as an obvious starting point for any former hotelier. It’s the most important feature of a hotel, right?

The good

A strong 4 star room, wonderful quality super king bed, cute view out the window of gazebo set up for an event. Good looking bathroom, all white metro tiles with nice products that are now in the standard refill form attached to the wall instead of wasteful mini products.  The shower was really nice and powerful. Good storage, all the amenities you need, coffee, tea, milk, bottled water for your convenience. Also bathrobes and slippers. Air-conditioning set the perfect temperature on one of the hottest day of the year (and by that I mean, proper European heat of 32 Celsius, not English standards heat), so we didn’t have to touch the thermostat and fiddle with it, it was just right. I really liked the view from the room as well. Spotlessly clean, well maintained room, everything worked. The walls are solid too, you can’t hear doors shutting four rooms down the corridor.

The not soo good

What’s happened to the MINIBAR in rooms? In a 4 star property? It’s not like the clientele here would leave without paying for it…. (This is not just an issue in Goodwood though, in a lot of hotels in the UK and sadly now European hotels too.) TV didn’t work properly or maybe we didn’t operate it properly – not that we so badly wanted to watch anything, but only the 4 aerial channels were available. Finally, do we think that, it might be time to get rid of the Nespresso machines?? I realise a lot of hotels invested a lot of money in the wasteful Nespresso machines 10 years ago, so now they are there and what are they supposed to do about it other than keep using it – fair enough, but it also indicates when was the last update to the room and more waste created.

The breakfast

The breakfast service was hands down one of the best I ever experienced, including my entire 5* hotel career. I don’t even know where to start with the compliment-shower.

The buffet table had everything you would dream for a delicious breakfast already – and apart from that, you can also have cooked breakfast with table service. The breakfast items are regularly refilled, there are number of the breakfast personnel is perfectly calculated, you don’t wait for anything. Even if it’s not on the buffet table (for some reason there is NO milk alternatives out there as an option – maybe they offend the old conservatives that aren’t there anyway – however, I asked for oat milk and I got oat milk in a little jug.

The highlights of the buffet table is the locally produced kefir – delicious, very creamy, not sharp -, and the different compotes of poached apricots and berries. What a treat! They were so delicious.

One morning I had just the musli with kefir, fruits and nuts, the next morning I tried the shakshuka – this was also yummy, freshly prepared, just the right portion. Husband had full English – and that was fully loaded with all the items you associate with a full English.

The breakfast service takes place in the main restaurant, plenty of seating and also outdoor seating are with parasols available.  It’s tastefully and quirkily decorated with old items of farming, decoration and other nicknacks – but it all comes together as a well curated collection of interesting objects. I did spend some time going around and looking at each.

As you can see, the option of the newspaper was unfortunately the Daily Telegraph only – which was also scattered around the hotel by some order as it seemed (maybe the Duke of Richmond has ties to it?) – if you wanted to read that utter garbage. We didn’t ruin our mornings with it.

The food

We did eat dinner at the flagship restaurant the first night, I will write a standalone post about it shortly.

It was a lovely meal, We also had snacks and coffee at the restaurant by the spa which is called Goodwood Bar and Grill. They were nice to us letting us sit in dressing gowns at the outside tables ( I did ask if we can sit down in dressing gowns, they said it’s no problem). We also had drinks here on Saturday night returning from the Festival Theatre. They stayed open later that night because of some function – we don’t know what was that, everything was quiet by the time we arrived back and only a couple of jetlagged American golf tourists were awake and having drinks.

I love thoughtful little things, like the coffee grounds below on the photo:

The staff

Half of the hotel seems to be running by local kids, but these kids are so polished in manner and professional at their work that as if they were doing this for decades. There are a couple of “mature” staff members but the the breakfast service and also the dinner service was staffed by mostly 17 years olds. They are all very polite, friendly, funny even when the conversation permitted, they are a breath of fresh air to the place and really make a difference just how much more friendlier and younger the place becomes because them. Goodwood, treasure these excellent young people! And take the Daily Telegraph out of their hands, so they remain kind and nice people. They all wear a white long sleeve shirt and denim – laid back, but also uniform. 

The spa

The spa is located on the other side of the building, but it’s still possible to walk there without having to go outside, which is great – I did this, it’s nice to walk from the room to the treatment rooms and the spa in your dressing gown with swimming costume underneath. On the way, at the spa reception, I just had to swap the room key for spa pass. 

Pool area

The pool area is spotlessly clean, there’s a swimming pool, shallow, but a little swim can be done. Locals can purchase a spa membership and can use the facilities along with hotel guests. Although during my spa visit there was a private swimming lesson in the pool for one small child, the pool was not at all busy. Only a few other guests were using the jacuzzi, the sauna and the steam cabin, some of them sitting outside on the sun loungers as it was very hot. Towels are available.

I took a photo after the spa was closed for the night, you can see it below, so you can see the area better. It’s a very classic looking pool room.

Treatments

I booked myself for a facial as a birthday treat. There are lots of treatments available: different body massages, facial treatments, mani&pedi and more. Booking on the website is really simple, I did that in advance. I booked myself an Earth Vitality Facial, a 60 minutes facial with gorgeous products and massage, it was very relaxing.

The grounds

The grounds around the hotel building consist of the car park (naturally, the size of the estate requires adequate parking, so they have that (there are even electric car charging points! Great!) They even parked an old double decker red bus in front of the main car park – not sure if it was there for an event or a permanent feature. Then there are three beautiful golf courses and the Golf Academy. This is however mostly a member only area, my husband is a keen golfer and he couldn’t book tee time at the preferred course as a hotel guest. This was a bit disappointing, but then he managed to book something different and play for an hour or so.

We did walk around the closes golf course on the first night – shortest night of the year, Summer Solstice. It was still light outside at nearly 10pm and walked out to the Golf Academy, spotting hares and birds. Lovely mature trees and native plants to see.

What we were up to for the rest of the weekend

Arrived late on Friday and checked in, then we went straight to the main restaurant and had dinner and drinks.

On Saturday, after breakfast I had a treatment, then used the spa, had a light lunch and headed to Chichester. Chichester is a lovely place to visit and we’ve many times, in fact stayed in town on those occasions. We mooched around all afternoon sipping on iced coffees, trying out the new cafes and restaurants that opened since our last visit two years ago. And of course  I popped into every charity shop, as I can’t resist them! Finally, we went to see a new production in the Festival Theatre ( Anna Karenina).

A perfect birthday weekend, this was!