Welcome Cottages Reviews 

We stayed at Pebbles cottage in Kessingland, Suffolk for a week 22nd Sept. The cottage was spotless, so clean, it was homely and welcoming. The owner Paul met us on arrival day, very welcoming, showed us around and gave us lots of information on local amenities. The beach was absolutely brilliant, so clean, such lovely walks. We had a pub over the road, 'Sailors Home', very welcoming, food was great, can recommend the pan dried sea bass - excellent. The secret tea rooms up the road did a great cream tea. The little beach hut shop was an absolute gem, lots of lovely things in there. Waterfront did lovely lunches. Surrounding countryside was beautiful. We will definite go back, only the 2nd best cottage we have stayed in over the years. 10/10. Can highly recommend this cottage.

Booked a cottage through them several months in advance. Received confirmation emails both at the time of booking and a few days before it was due to start.

Called the owner to arrange key collect, the day before setting off. She was surpised because she had cancelled the booking several weeks earlier (apparently she had cancelled all bookings with Welcome Cottages because of their poor customer service; I see why).

I contacted Welcome Cottages who blamed it on short notice from the owner. When I told the owner this she was able to provide email evidence that they had known for weeks and hadn't bothered to tell me.

As a result I was left with a very stressful afternoon desperately trying to find an alternative with just a few hours to go. I failed to do so and so all our annual leave etc has been wasted, as had 'special' food bought for the time away plus booked day trips etc.

It was an absolute farce of a booking and such a waste of money and time.

Brilliant service of Welcome Cottages.
We stayed in The Barn in Llandrindod Wells, for a week & thoroughly enjoyed it. We went with 3 children & 2 dogs. Couldn't speak anymore highly of the owners of this beautiful place it's an absolute credit to you. They're so welcoming & we had a nice welcome pack waiting for us of Prssecco & Welsh cakes. Is very much home from home with a cosy living room, large kitchen, 3 bedrooms all done lovely & bathrooms. The Barn is attached to the owners & the working farm there which was lovely. Good size garden for the dogs to run about. Loved it here, we went exploring places quite locally, out everyday! Definitely would come back again. Thankyou so much for being so welcoming & putting this little gem up for renting out.
Jen & Baz xx

A review of Welcome Cottages AND Rose Barn, Anderby, Skegness. Rose Barn is one of 3 cottages at Priory Farm, Sea Road, Anderby, Skegness. You will find information on this cottage on Welcome Cottages and Cottages.com.

Firstly, let me say that the owners are very nice. However, I wouldn't be doing any future guests a favour by not explaining the issues we had this with cottage..
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DIRTY - On arrival at Rose Barn on Saturday the 21st; and after a 10 hour overnight journey from our first holiday week in the Highlands - it was immediately apparent that the property had not been cleaned properly. It was filthy! There were stains on the walls/skirting boards and the tiles in the bathroom were really grotty, the back in & around the toilet was filthy with old stains, the dining table was sticky, there were smears of what I hope was chocolate on the tv cabinet and my partner had to wipe what looked like bogey's off the back of the dining chairs. Tiles in the kitchen had sauce stains on them, the kettle had not been descaled in I don't know how long (we did this ourselves) and the inside windows were dirty. We had travelled overnight for over 10 hours and parked at a nearby supermarket until the arrival time of 4pm, so were devastated and shocked at the state of the cottage. ​
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I went straight to the owners house (on site) and complained and he came to take a look. He seemed very apologetic and offered to clean the property himself. He said he suspected the cleaner had just got too tired by the time she/he got to cleaning our property last, (there are 3 cottages on site) due to the heat! That's all well and good but we paid over £700 for this cottage and he, being the owner, should have inspected the property prior to our arrival, which he evidently did not. As for stating the cleaner got too tired, I can assure you that these stains do not just appear over one week, they clearly have accumulated over a period of time during which 'proper' cleaning has not taken place.​
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WiFi - Now, in the description of this cottage, it states that WiFi is available. It is not available at all. Not ONCE during our entire stay did we manage to connect to the WiFi. It was non-existent. Again, another visit to the owner, to be told that as the cottage was so 'rural,' the WiFi is intermittent. Intermittent it was not. It was, as I have already stated, non-existent! If we had known this prior to booking, we would have not booked at all! We had 2 teenage sons with us & I run a business that relies on WiFi connection. Yes, I was on holiday but I still have to deal with enquiries and emails and I was not able to do so. Therefore, I have lost sales over the time spent here. And just to point out again, that we had spent one week prior to this cottage in the HIGHLANDS, in the Wee Hoose (cottages.com.) No problems with the WiFi there...in the HIGHLANDS!!​
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LAUNDRY - In the description, it states there is a shared laundry room, between the 3 cottages. Great. Only the 'laundry room' is actually attached to the owners house and so you feel very reluctant to use it. Well I needed to use it and so asked the owner if we could. Of course, it was fine, but he offered to actually put our washing in to the machine as it was already in use! Sorry, but dirty personal laundry should be handled by yourself. I found this very weird indeed and made my partner go and put our washing in himself. We used the laundry facilities twice and, on the second occasion I went back to retrieve the washing, only to find the 'shared laundry room' locked! I was then forced to knock the owners door once again. He just said he was going to bring it back to me once done! This is clearly not a 'shared laundry room' at all. I prefer to handle all aspects of my washing in a 'shared laundry room' myself!​
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DOGS - We do not leave our dogs unattended in a holiday cottage without good reason. After all, it's their holiday too. And we were very aware that there were 3 cottages on site. However, it was extremely hot this past week. Because of this, we were limited to staying in during the day and taking the dogs out in the evening, once it had cooled down. This was not a problem but It did mean that our 2 teenage sons were very bored (and no WiFi remember!) As the days went by, we did notice that next door, (the guests in Clematis Cottage,) were out most days, and leaving their dogs in the cottage. We know this as we heard them barking when our dogs were out in the garden!​
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On Weds morning we decided to go for breakfast in a café 1.5 miles away. We did think about taking the dogs but our elderly Yorkie, who is 14, was beginning to get stressed with the heat. We knew we would not be long and as the 2 dogs next door were being left day after day, we thought a short period of time would be fine. ​
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We were gone approx. 1.5 hours. On our return a note was pushed through our door asking us not to leave the dogs unattended in the property! Apparently, they barked constantly the entire time. We were of course very apologetic about this and wrote a note back to the owners apologising, but also pointing out that the dogs next door were also left and that we could hear them barking! The next morning (Thurs morning) there was a tap on the door and the owner just said dogs were not allowed to stay in properties unattended, due to insurance/fire reasons. Okay, fine. But why was it one rule for us and another for everyone else? This has seriously angered me as I can absolutely assure you that we left them for no longer than 1.5 hours! And, to add insult to injury, one of the cottages was playing very loud music late in to the night! ​
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At this point in our holiday we felt we had had enough and no longer felt welcome. We left the cottage on Thursday the 26th July - 2 days earlier before our holiday ended. It has really upset us all, that we had such a horrible end to our holiday as our first week had been so good. ​
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This cottage was not even our initial choice. We had booked a cottage on the Scottish borders for our 2nd week, after doing a week in the Highlands at the Wee Hoose. Unfortunately, we were contacted by cottages.com a few weeks prior to our holiday informing us that the swimming pool at our 2nd cottage was out of action. At such short notice they struggled to find anything suitable as we wanted either a pool or hot tub. This was literally the only cottage left that they could find. We even had to pay another £50 more for it!​
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My family have enjoyed cottage holidays for over 10 years with this company and all it's affiliated partners. Only once have we been let down and now this is the 2nd time. We feel badly let down this time. After putting in a complaint with Welcome cottages they had the cheek to offer us £50 in compensation! They are FALSELY advertising this cottage as having WiFi. It really DOES not. I realise it does not bother some people but I would have never booked this cottage if there was no WiFi. There are laws regarding false advertising and I have pointed this out to Welcome Cottages. To date, the cottage is STILL being advertised as having WiFi! ​
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Welcome Cottages have ignored my last email and I am now obtaining a refund through my credit card. A tip for those larger purchases...always pay on a credit card if possible. There is a 'section 75' law whereby those who use credit cards to pay can claim their money back if the purchase is not as described or you have any problems. ​

Easy booking and good owners

what a horrible experience.
I had to change the dates and I was charged, I have then had to cancel giving 5 months notice and again I am being charged or told I can transfer for a further cost! when I have said I am not paying any further monies I have been told I will be sent a letter chasing me for the money. they can resell this holiday and will not lose out on any money! con artist

I decided to book a February half term holiday this year through Welcome Cottages as I was was looking to book a family holiday with our dog. Their website showed a suitable dog friendly cottage, and even better if we booked straight away we would get a saving off the normal price and only have to pay £274 which included their £39 booking/admin fee, so we duly booked. After we had booked, we received confirmation and a breakdown of fees as follows, holiday home £210, Pet £25, Booking/admin fee £39 Total £274...No probs happy to pay them commission of £39, as we thought the holiday had already been discounted. Imagine our total surprise when we found out during our holiday that if we had booked direct with the owner the whole holiday would have only cost us £200. As I said before we have no issue paying the booking/admin fee of £39 as this was stated in the booking. So as far as we could see the cost should have been a total of £239, however, welcome cottages charged us £274 and said this was actually discounted from the normal rate. So we had been charged an extra £35 on top of the booking fee for the priveledge of booking early, not exactly a discount is it lol. It is extremely dishonest for companies like this to hide charges in this way, they added an extra £10 to the actual owners direct rate of £200, and not only that they charged us an extra £25 for our dog on top of this when the owner does not charge for pets, so to clarify, the same holiday, direct with the owner, £200, but if booked with Welcome cottages it cost £274, and this was supposed to be discounted and their advert only implied they were taking £39 extra for the booking.. I duly contacted Welcome cottages about my concerns and a day later they sent an email asking for a contact number so they could contact me to discuss my concerns, that was some 5 days ago and I have heard nothing back from them. If they actually take the time to read this review I would like them to refund me the hidden charges of £35 ASAP and explain on here for everyone to see how they justify these extra charges..I for one will never book another holiday through them and urge anyone reading this review to consider likewise, maybe if their revenue is affected they will start to treat their customers with respect and offer an open and transparent service.

Booking process was pretty simple, and the pet friendly search was good.
However the description of the cottage wasn't exactly accurate. Linked rooms were mentioned between two twins; it didn't mention anywhere that one of the ground floor doubles could only be accessed through another double room unless you went outside.
It also didn't mentioned that one of the twins could only be accessed either through the single on one side, or through the other twin on the other side. This is a pretty important factor when considering who might be staying there!
We knew the decor of the place was old fashioned from the pictures, but at the price paid we had no idea quite how old fashioned it was. Bathrooms were not only unclean but out of the 70's. The rest of the house was pretty shabby too. I really feel like the price we paid was very high for the standard of property we got.
There was literally no linens except bedding. No soap, no towels etc. Again, at the price, I would expect such basics to have been provided.
I feel really disappointed. I think the company should be visiting more of their properties in person and resolving such obvious issues before they support the advertising of them.

I contacted Welcome cottages to ask about refund conditions when an unforeseen circumstance made it impossible to go away. This was not covered by travel insurance so it was at huge cost to me. I had 2/3 days from contacting them before I lapsed into an even greater loss. In this time I asked around to see if anyone else would like to go. No-one did so I called on the Friday night deadline just after 8pm to cancel. According to their website their call centre is open until 9pm on a Friday night. I tried various numbers assigned to the company and got the same dead end each time saying that the call centre would open the next morning at 9am. I immediately emailed to make sure I have evidence of trying to contact them before the deadline. The next morning I called and explained to the member of staff. I was told that I'd missed the deadline so I could no longer claim 25% refund. I had to get considerably annoyed in order for them to look into my email. Eventually the email was confirmed and it was agreed I was entitled to a 25% refund. The member of staff said their emails didn't work at the weekend and I would therefore have to wait until Monday for confirmation of cancellation. Monday came and went. I had no email. I emailed after to ask what was happening. I was replied to. the next day I had a 22.5% refund in my account. They add in an extra rip-off charge by making the booking fee non-refundable. The cancellation process most certainly cannot be described as "stress-free."

Booked a holiday cottage for 4 nights in June through welcome cottages.

Found welcome cottages website fairly simple to use and particularly liked their pet friendly search feature.

Booking was simple with confirmation and details all emailed in advance. Like the fact a few days before the trip we had an email suggesting things like cancel your newspaper deliveries.

The cottage was as stated on the description, very nice, great facilities and equipment.

Cottage owner was pleasant, introduced himself and explained a few things then kept out of the way.

Complimentary bottle of wine, milk, tea, coffee and sugar on arrival.

I tend to have quite high standards, especially being internet savvy and working for a web company myself. Found the website very good and the cottage meeting expectations. Very impressed.