JA Mar Hall Golf & Spa Resort

Carrie Smart3/5 · 2026-09

Whilst the hotel itself and the grounds are spectacular, unfortunately the service was not so much. I recently stayed at the hotel for two nights, spending £300 in total, and somehow the hotel managed to misplace my luggage from the storage room. In a truly bizarre turn of events, my luggage ended up in Edinburgh?! I completely understand that mistakes happen, but honestly, the apology I received felt very much like a forced apology. I had to stay at the hotel until 2pm, but was never once offered any food, refreshments or anything to make the situation a little easier. I ended up having to hang around the hotel in my pyjamas after attending a wedding! What was perhaps most disappointing was the attitude of some of the staff. When I expressed that I was, understandably, a tiny bit unhappy about the situation, I was made to feel as though I had two heads!!! Seriously, this was NOT handled well at all. Interestingly, other people I know who also stayed at the hotel left some belongings behind. They were not contacted to let them know, and when they asked about their belongings, the response from staff was again as though they were speaking another language. This hotel is absolutely gorgeous, and the grounds are spectacular, but there is clearly a lot of work needed when it comes to certain aspects of the customer service. A beautiful hotel can only go so far when the service leaves you feeling completely disregarded.

Jack Best1/5 · 2026-06

I wasn’t going to post this but given there has been no effort to respond to our complaint for over a week, here is my girlfriends review of our stay: I had booked an overnight with yourself for my boyfriend’s birthday. I hate to complain but there were several things that happened throughout the stay that were negative and impacted our stay. We experienced a 1.5 hour delay getting into our room, which was a disappointing start. I had emailed prior to the stay about it being a surprise bday gift and the hotel kindly said they would put a complimentary chefs plate in the room. Because of this, I didn’t bring a cake or anything as that would have been enough. As we went into the room there was no chefs plate. I did say about this and 3-4 hours later someone came up with it as we were going for dinner. We asked for prosecco glasses as we had brought our own bottle, these did not arrive and came around 2 hours after we asked. These were also charged to our room as 2 glasses of prosecco even though it was only empty glasses we requested and received. On arrival to dinner we waited 1 hour 15 mins for our main dish. Breakfast we had to wait outside for 30 minutes to get in and were not served for a further 30 minutes. We had arrived at 9:45 and were panicking as we had not received our dish till 10:45 and check out was 11. Asked for 2 waters and did not receive these. When asked where the waters were, I was asked to self serve. The breakfast buffet was empty (no croissants, fruit etc) wrong breakfast was served to my boyfriend, which was quickly fixed as the spinich had just been scraped off and salmon had been added, which was disappointing.

Anne Heaney5/5 · 2026-05

I’ve visited Mar Hall for breakfast a number of times, but today’s experience reminded me just how exceptional the restaurant team truly are. The service was warm, professional, and genuinely attentive from start to finish, with one young member of staff in particular standing out. He had served us before and remembered how much I loved the homemade gluten-free seeded bread—a small detail, but one that made all the difference. At the end of our visit, he kindly surprised me with a little takeaway gift of some to enjoy at home, which was such a thoughtful and personal gesture. The bread itself is fantastic, but it was the kindness, care, and attention shown that made the experience so memorable. It’s wonderful to see such talented young staff delivering service with pride and professionalism. Mar Hall should be incredibly proud of the team they are building—excellent hospitality is always about people, and today they absolutely excelled.

Christian Gotti3/5 · 2026-05

Location really good and accessible. Paid for suite but was a little underwhelming, still new and not dated though. Spa was pretty good. Gallery menu was meh, restaurant fairly priced with good wine selection. It’s a nice little break, but I don’t feel it’s worthy of the 5* because everything is so slow. They asked at gallery if we wanted all of our food together, they brought starter, main and dessert 🤣… the ice cream was melting and we had to ask them to put it back in fridge. restaurant took forever with food and wine. Gallery took 20 mins to get a coffee. Staffing realllllly needs work.

Alan Malcolm3/5 · 2026-05

We Stayed here on Saturday, the location is amazing and the room was fantastic and comfortable. However on arrival there seemed to be some confusion with our check in, it sounded like someone had been checked in to our room so we had to wait 20 minutes despite arriving an hour after check in time for them to get a new room. When we went for dinner we were seated and it seems forgotten about for again around 20 minutes I ordered lamb which was finished so opted for the chicken which arrived lukewarm and was quite underwhelming my partner ordered a vegetarian mushroom dish which should have came with fries but we had to ask for these as they had forgot to bring them. When we arrived for breakfast my partner ordered a vegetarian breakfast which arrived with 1 sausage some wilted spinach and 3 mushrooms so we asked if it had should have came with anything else due to the fact my breakfast had 2 bacon 2 sausage haggis black pudding a load of mushrooms tomato and scrambled eggs and the response was that the vegetarian breakfast is set up on the till as a vegan breakfast so that’s what she was served which I found pretty weird. Then when we went to check out I was asked to pay £120 towards my room despite already prepaying for it which they checked and found to be correct, I can only assume this was due to this issue at checking in. Overall it was a good stay and the spa was really nice just felt some parts of it were let down for a 5 star resort.

annette miranda3/5 · 2026-04

Our group stay was scheduled a year ago but some members of our party had to be moved to allow for their mobility issues even though these needs had already been discussed. Delays in delivery of luggage were experienced, also. Dining, the food was very good, brunch offered cereals, pastry, fresh fruit sliced meats and cheeses, juices, coffee, and teas....but for dining ordered meals service was extremely delayed, there definitely appeared to be staffing issues as the available staff apologized for delays and appeared to be trying to get our food to us. Also, when attending our final dinner seating became a point of contention as our original dining area was not made available to us and the agreed upon menu wasn't either! The area was lovely, the grounds, the castle itself, and rooms but I will not return or recommend as there were apparent management issues in communication regarding our reservations for rooms and meals.