"Utopia Spa occupies the sort of building that should make creating a luxury spa almost effortless. I visited yesterday with my partner and sister, and our first impression was genuinely impressive: the building and its surroundings are stunning. Unfortunately, what followed felt like a case study in how beautiful architecture alone does not necessarily translate into a luxurious spa experience.
Our welcome was warm and friendly. The lady who greeted us was lovely, but as she began explaining the layout, the more peculiar the whole arrangement seemed.
On the upper floor, an enormous reception desk dominates the centre of the space, with the restaurant to the left and the relaxation room to the right. The actual spa facilities are downstairs and require key-card access, despite guests already having passed reception to reach them. It feels unnecessarily fragmented.
More importantly, the lighting and ambience of this reception area simply do not say spa. It is bright and functional where it should be atmospheric and calming. There is an immediate disconnect between the grandeur of the building and the experience being created inside it.
The changing rooms
Downstairs, the maintenance issues became apparent almost immediately.
In the men’s changing room, I tried five lockers in succession that didn’t work. Some appeared to have been forced open and damaged, while others seemingly had flat batteries.
The changing area itself is another strange use of space. There appears to be an abundance of square footage throughout Utopia, yet comparatively little bench space precisely where guests actually need to sit, undress and get changed.
The showers were also poorly maintained. Several shower heads were heavily affected by limescale, with blocked or defective outlets causing the water to spray unpredictably rather than providing an even shower.
The lighting is again much too bright for the environment. There is no swimming-costume dryer, which would be a genuinely useful feature, but overall the changing facilities don’t feel commensurate with a premium spa.
Then there is the décor. Blue patterned wallpaper sits opposite beautiful natural yellow stone, creating a peculiar visual clash. Unfortunately, this lack of coherence becomes something of a recurring theme throughout Utopia.
The pool hall
And then you enter the pool hall.
Architecturally, it is absolutely magnificent. The ceiling is spectacular and the scale and character of the room should make this one of the most memorable spa pools in the region.
Unfortunately, once the initial architectural impact wears off, the neglect becomes difficult to ignore.
Around half of the lights appeared not to be working, creating a bizarre patchwork in which some areas were brightly illuminated while others were considerably darker.
Inside the pool itself, dozens of areas of mosaic tiling were visibly missing. For what should be the centrepiece of a luxury spa, the pool looked surprisingly unloved.
But perhaps the most striking thing about the pool hall is the noise.
There are numerous water features continuously dropping or cascading water into the pool. Running water can, of course, be wonderfully relaxing. Unfortunately, in a cavernous room with significant reverberation, having so many of them operating simultaneously creates an almost constant roar.
Instead of gently hearing water trickling in the background, you find yourself sitting in a high-decibel, echoing swimming hall. It is the opposite of tranquil.
Some soft ambient music would help, but the room desperately needs acoustic consideration as well.
Then there are the deckchairs.
Rows of them face the pool, at points two rows deep. We joked that it looked rather like the deck of the Titanic. If all of those chairs were actually occupied, moving around portions of the pool would feel remarkably awkward.
For such a beautiful architectural space, the furniture arrangement is an interior designer’s nightmare.
The garden
Stepping outside is a relief because the garden itself is truly beautiful. It has enormous potential and is arguably one of Utopia’s greatest assets.
The newer sauna is attractive and was one of the better spa facilities we used.
Unfortunately, the hot tub is another example of maintenance letting the surroundings down. Its interior is coated in a rough, almost sandpaper-like finish, with substantial areas of that coating missing.
It was also set to a staggering 41°C. I like a genuinely hot hot tub, but even I found this excessively hot.
The garden itself also needs more care. Grass and planting appeared to have been allowed to die back significantly during the recent dry weather.
Some of the paving is uneven, while conspicuously light-coloured mortar has been used between dark slabs. It sounds like a small detail, but in a luxury environment these details matter enormously.
Ordering a drink – through your phone
Refreshments are ordered using an app.
This struck me as completely counterintuitive. People visit spas partly to switch off from technology, yet here you are encouraged to take your phone out and start navigating an ordering system.
We ordered drinks only to discover that some were out of stock, despite not being marked as unavailable on the app, meaning we then had to go through the process again.
Surely the more luxurious solution is also the simplest: have staff regularly circulate through the pool, garden and relaxation areas taking drinks orders.
Guests can then leave their phones in their lockers and actually relax.
The relaxation room
The upstairs relaxation room may be the most baffling use of a large space in the entire building.
Herbal teas are available, but there is no properly plumbed-in hot-water facility. Instead, there is a thermos-style container of hot water.
And then we arrive at one of my particular pet hates in a supposedly premium spa: paper cups.
Who wants to sit in a luxury relaxation room drinking herbal tea from a disposable paper cup?
It also creates an almost comic secondary problem. A cleaner has to circulate carrying a bin bag and repeatedly empty the bin of all those discarded cups. Nothing against the cleaner whatsoever – they were simply doing their job – but somebody walking around a relaxation room with a bin bag in tow hardly enhances the ambience.
The room itself is anything but relaxing.
There is some of the most extraordinary doughnut-patterned wallpaper, ill-fitting blinds at the windows, clear glass panels in the doors allowing light from the brightly illuminated foyer to spill into the room, strange plastic battery-operated candles and squeaky hammock-style chairs that wobble as you sit in them.
Also some uniquely awful dunelm style rugs on the floor.
There are recliners, but no water beds or anything that makes particularly imaginative use of such a substantial room.
The entire space suffers from light pollution and visual clutter.
And to get there from the spa, you have to leave the spa facilities downstairs, climb the stairs, pass reception and then enter the relaxation room.
Unsurprisingly, relatively few people seemed to bother.
The fundamental problem is the layout. It is dreadful and chaotic, and constantly interrupts the sense that you are moving through one coherent spa environment.
Lunch
Unfortunately, lunch was the lowest point of the visit.
My main course was, without exaggeration, one of the most unpleasant meals I can remember being served.
It consisted of strips of chicken placed over shredded lettuce, containing a fish element, an extraordinary quantity of mayonnaise and pieces of stale-tasting bread thrown into the mixture. The amount of mayonnaise seemed almost greater than the other ingredients combined. I genuinely struggled to eat it.
One of our starters was salmon, which essentially amounted to a serving of smoked salmon. The salmon itself was perfectly pleasant, but it seemed a very strange and unimaginative way of presenting a starter.
Another starter was tomato soup, presented as little more than a dollop of soup in a bowl accompanied by burnt toast.
The food doesn’t need to be complicated. A spa is perhaps one of the easiest environments in which to create a small, fresh, beautifully executed menu. Simple salads, good-quality proteins, soups, fresh bread and attractive light dishes would be infinitely preferable to ambitious combinations that simply don’t work.
And then there’s the restaurant décor…
The interior design reaches perhaps its strangest point in the restaurant.
One wall features wallpaper designed to mimic rusty wooden barrels.
Another features spoons and forks.
Elsewhere in the spa we have blue patterned wallpaper, natural yellow stone and doughnuts.
Individually some of these choices might be harmless. Collectively, they make the building feel as though numerous unrelated design concepts have collided with one another.
And that is such a shame because the building itself is gorgeous.
The natural stone, architecture, enormous pool hall and beautiful grounds already provide all the visual interest Utopia needs. Instead of allowing those elements to speak for themselves, they are competing with wallpaper, colours, lighting and furniture that appear to have been selected without any overarching design language.
The result is an absolute travesty to such a beautiful building and setting.
What I would change
The frustrating thing about Utopia is that many of its problems are entirely fixable.
This is not fundamentally a bad spa requiring demolition and reinvention. It is an extraordinary property that desperately needs a coherent refurbishment programme and somebody with a very clear understanding of what a luxury spa should feel like.
Start with the pool.
Drain it. Replace the numerous missing mosaics and comprehensively regrout it. A magnificent pool hall deserves a pool that looks immaculate rather than patched and neglected.
Repair every broken light and redesign the lighting so that the extraordinary ceiling and architecture are illuminated deliberately rather than having random pools of brightness and darkness.
Then address the noise.
Remove or deactivate perhaps half of the splashing water features. Running water should provide a subtle background sound, not dominate the room.
Introduce very subtle, soothing ambient music and employ an acoustic specialist to identify ways of reducing the extraordinary reverberation. Modern acoustic treatments can be incorporated sympathetically without ruining the architecture.
Reconsider the rows of deckchairs and give guests more space around them.
Outside, reline or completely resurface the hot tub, repair its damaged abrasive finish and turn the temperature down slightly.
Lift the poorly finished areas of paving and relay them properly, using a mortar colour appropriate to the dark slabs. Restore the lawn and planting so that the garden once again matches the quality of its surroundings.
In the changing rooms, repair the numerous broken lockers and replace the defective, limescale-damaged shower heads. Provide substantially more changing benches. There is plenty of space in this building – it simply needs to be allocated where guests actually need it.
add swimming-costume dryers, which are exactly the sort of thoughtful practical detail a good spa should provide.
Get rid of the dependence on an app for refreshments. Have staff rotate through the different spa areas and take drinks orders directly from guests.
That would feel considerably more luxurious while allowing guests to put their phones away.
I would then make a much more fundamental change upstairs.
Move reception into the main arrival area and reclaim that enormous central upper-floor space for the spa.
Use it for additional thermal experiences, treatment facilities, relaxation spaces or other spa features. At present, an extraordinary amount of valuable floor area is dedicated to an enormous reception desk that guests have already passed simply to get into the building.
The relaxation room needs to be completely reimagined.
Proper cups, glasses and crockery instead of disposable paper cups. Properly installed hot-water facilities. Comfortable, silent furniture. Water beds or genuinely luxurious loungers. Proper window treatments. Much lower lighting. Acoustic separation from reception. No light flooding through glass doors.
And please, lose the doughnuts.
In fact, lose most of the wallpaper.
Utopia desperately needs an experienced hospitality and spa interior designer to come in and establish one coherent design language throughout the property.
Remove the doughnuts, cutlery, faux rusty barrels and competing patterns. Simplify the colour palette. Introduce warm, controlled lighting. Use natural materials sympathetic to the beautiful stone already present and allow the architecture to provide the drama.
The food offering needs the same rethink. A smaller menu of fresh, uncomplicated dishes prepared extremely well would transform the restaurant experience.
An extraordinary opportunity being missed
What makes all of this so frustrating is that Utopia already possesses the expensive things that money cannot easily recreate.
The building is magnificent.
The pool hall is extraordinary.
The grounds are beautiful.
And several members of staff we encountered were genuinely warm and welcoming.
The foundations of an exceptional destination spa are already there.
What is missing is coherence, maintenance, attention to detail and a proper understanding of the guest journey.
Repair what is broken.
Simplify what is chaotic.
Quiet what is noisy.
Dim what is glaring.
Improve the food.
Let guests put their phones away.
And, perhaps most importantly, allow that extraordinary building to speak for itself rather than covering it in doughnuts, cutlery and fake barrels.
Do those things, and Utopia could genuinely become one of the most impressive spa destinations in the area.
At present, however, it feels like a beautiful building fighting against virtually every design decision that has been imposed upon it.
There is a remarkable luxury spa hiding underneath all of this.
It just desperately needs to be allowed out."
