MACDONALD RANDOLPH HOTEL

A recent weekend visit with my wife showed that, under current management, this is simply not up to the standard of a five star hotel. First, please give up the habit of putting the name of the chain in front of the name of a venerable old hotel. The Randolph is a venerable old Oxford institution. Putting "Macdonald" in front diminishes its appeal and suggests it has been homogenised by a chain. And so it proved... The room and bathroom were comfortably appointed, but extremely small. For £395/night, room only, it is not acceptable that there was no room for a bath. The lounge has been redecorated in a bland style, while none of the grandeur of the old powder blue velvet banquettes. The worst part, however, was the breakfast, for which they seek to charge £21.50. The staff simply do not have the training, nor the language skills, to operate a high quality restaurant. They were surly and slow, and made no attempt to check on whether guests' needs were met. When we arrived there was no fruit left on the buffet, and it took an age to get them to replenish it. Tea and coffee took some minutes to arrive and there were no teaspoons. Hot food (an omelette and eggs benedict) took twenty minutes and two reminders to arrive, and were badly presented and entirely ungarnished. The omelette was leathery and both were tasteless. At this price a guest expects fresh, organic free range eggs with a rich orange yoke, not a pale, tasteless mush. On the reception desk is an iPad which scrolls through advertising messages suggesting the staff are "passionate" about service and food quality. Whatever it means, this claim is simply unsustainable. When we complained, they did not charge for the breakfast, but by then the experience was irredeemable. There are lots of good hotels in Oxford. My advice is to go to one of the others until standards improve.

A beautiful hotel, nice room and extremely comfortable bed ,.. but the staff were all terrible ( particularly the receptionists ). Rude, uninterested , brusque, poor english, slow , not interested etc etc sums up every memeber of staff who dealt with us. Where was the/a manager ' This is no way a 5 star hotel. Someone here needs to take charge of these rude lazy hotel staff,..perhap the manager , if there is one '

I have stayed at several hotels in Oxford and this have been renovated due to an earlier fire. This hotel has nice service and great atmosphere, but everyone knows that you need to remove one star in the UK for a comparison, it has always been so. Dont take me wrong, I really enjoy my stay and have nothing to complain about but a 5 star hotel in Dubai or Hong Kong is a different story. This is a very good English hotel with positive "English" feel to it, the rooms is not WOW but the service is good. All in all the location and the lobby is enough to say that there is not many options nearby if you like a/c on your room etc.

Booked afternoon tea for the family but found it a disappointment. Stale bread and scones which were also over baked. Service wasn't brilliant either. Expensive for what it was. I Wouldn't recommend as I'm sure you could pay the same price or less for fresher food and more 'warmth' in the service.

This was one night stay in a short driving tour. We booked a car park for GBP 28.50 and were SO GLAD we did. The concierge got the car and luggage booked in ahead of time and we came back a few hours later. The hotel calmly rearranged our two rooms to be adjacent (as we had booked several months beforehand via booking.com). The room was modern and excellent, the hotel decor was "old class establishment" and an impressive. The service people were friendly, if a bit mistranslated at times with so many multicultural people on staff. The restaurant is not 5 star and management needs a standards rev-up but was still workable like a 3 or 4 star would provide. Overall we enjoyed the experience because the room, front desk, concierges and location were all excellent. If the restaurant staff were more switched on this would have been a top rating.