Thermae Bath Spa Reviews 

Deep Disappointment with Spa Policy at Thermae Bath Spa

We visited Thermae Bath Spa with high expectations, having received a thoughtful gift voucher from friends that included access and a meal. Unfortunately, what was meant to be a relaxing and enjoyable experience turned into something deeply upsetting and, frankly, hard to believe.

Upon arrival, I was informed that I would have to leave my phone behind as part of your no-phone policy. I understand the intention behind this, privacy, relaxation, and discouraging photography. However, when I explained that I have children and must remain contactable in case of an emergency, I was told the rule still applied. I found this extremely distressing.

As a mother and someone who supports other women through my work (including arranging childcare so they can attend courses or access support), I am very aware of how crucial it is for parents to be reachable. My children were left with responsible adults, but I still hold full legal and moral responsibility for them. If something were to happen and I was unreachable, the consequences could be serious, and completely unavoidable.

We asked whether we could at least have our meal from the voucher while keeping a phone nearby, but this was also refused. In today’s world, being completely cut off is not realistic for many people, especially parents. Museums and cultural venues request that people refrain from taking photos, but they do not confiscate personal devices. Why can’t your policy follow a similar approach?

I left feeling frustrated, powerless, and honestly, as if my rights and responsibilities as a parent had been disregarded. I truly believe this kind of rigid policy doesn’t reflect the needs or realities of modern visitors. A spa should be a place of comfort and care, not a place where someone feels they must choose between relaxation and their duty of care as a parent.

Sadly, I cannot recommend this experience to anyone, especially fellow parents. I hope this feedback encourages your team to reconsider the policy and introduce more flexible, humane solutions for people in situations like mine.

When in Bath....don't visit the Thermae Spa if you want a relaxing Spa experience. It resembles a public swimming pool, with life guards on alert with whistles, pools full to bursting and the noise of loud chatter is deafening. There is nothing relaxing about it at all! It is a non zen zone. How sad, or naive, to think the town of the original Baths would have a Spa to beat the rest.

4 of us visited on 03/04/2025
Having visited spas previously I was surprised to find we had to supply our own footwear and found that this cheapend the experience along with the tatty robes and sandpaper towels.
The pools were lovely and relaxing but the sauna wasn't hot enough and one of the steam rooms was definitely missing the aroma.
They had 2 lifts but only 1 was working which led to long waits to go up and down to the diffrent levels.
We had booked an afternoon tea the staff were lovely but the cafe reminded me of a leisure centre cafe and the salmon and cream cheese sandwiches were in fact salmon paste which again the above made the experience feel cheep and lacking the luxury shown in the website.
Unable to post any photos as they take your phones and lock in a case as my sister was visiting from abroad it would have been nice to have got some photos for memories.
All in all the pools are lovely but the rest felt cheap and tired and not the luxuary experience that we expected or paid for .

Got an allergic reaction from all the chemicals in the rooftop pool, place was over crowded and dirty, flip flops mysteriously went missing.

Booked a couple of years ago - £250 for a couples massage and two hour spa session. The water was tepid, the massages were good, on the whole a pretty average experience that left me feeling a bit like a cash cow. Went to enquire to book again, perhaps hoping the water might be warmer this time and the experience less average, to find they are charging a whopping £340 for both the massages and the spa. You simply have to be joking. Booked in a masseur and a dinner elsewhere. What an absolute joke.

We really enjoyed our time at the spar, both the pools are fantastic. The only reason I gave it 4 stars was , all the cubicles that had steam , you were not able to see any thing in front of you .It was like fog,and I did feel a bit afraid I was going to fall as couldn't see anything, I think it is very dangerous and felt I couldn't stay in the cubicles. This was something I was looking forward to, but ended up spending the time in the two pools. I do think the spar should have some sort of fan,working every so often to clear the steam , so you can see where you are going. I hope somebody will take notice of this review as in my opinion the cubicles are very dangerous.

We loved the Thermae Spa!!!!!
It was unsurprisingly busy, but functioned like a well-oiled machine ensuring everyone got the chance to relax and feel the benefits of the mineralised waters in both pools and the various treatment areas.
It was also very clean!!! Well done Team Thermae - that cannot be easy.
A HUGE thank you to Phill for making it possible for us and taking the extra time out to make our visit to Bath and the Spa so memorable. We'll be back for more!!

I wasn’t happy with the phone ban policy, as I need to stay in contact with my family at all times, and this made things inconvenient for me. However, I really enjoyed the massage done by Holly—it was exceptional and made up for some of the disappointment. Great work on the massage, but I would appreciate a more flexible phone policy in the future.

We had a few hours at the spa on a Saturday. Towels and robes were provided. Indoor pool beautifully warm, rooftop pool less so, but the weather has been terrible. The whole facility was pretty busy but despite this we did manage to use all the different rooms (steam, infra red, ice etc).
My husband and I did have a treatment massage package each by Holly and Emma who were both excellent. The quality and service they provided was outstanding and was the highlight of our experience.
To improve, the spa needs to reduce the number of people using the facility and make the experience more exclusive.

Very very disappointed. Below is my email to customer services of what happened - their response to date has been woeful and they still haven't refunded us, offered any kind of compensation for our inconvenience and costs and they gave us no warning when they knew about the incident 24 hours earlier - totally unacceptable.

"We booked back on the 19th November to come for a Spa day on the 5th December.

For us to come we needed to take time off work, arrange childcare and make arrangements to travel to Bath for the day.

The first we heard of any problem was this email that I didn't pick until later in the morning due to patchy internet access whilst out in Bath.

I received a phone call at around 11:23 from a member of your team - merely two hours and half before we were due to arrive.

By this point we had already travelled to Bath and were walking around the City.

The lady on the call explained the situation and I enquired as to whether it would be possible to offer some kind of extension on the 2 hrs already booked as a goodwill gesture - she proceeded to ask for card details to make the refund and said I would need to email about that. I then asked why she wasn't able to communicate to customer services for someone to give me a call. At this point she repeated herself for card details and said she was going to hang up the phone and then proceeded to do so. I'd recommend listening to the recording if you have a copy of it. It was disrespectful and inappropriate for a paying customer who was extremely disappointed and had been inconvenienced at this point. I don't even recall an apology being made. This member of staff should be re-trained in how to deal with customers and spoken to at the very minimum.

The outcome is we've been severely inconvenienced and put out of pocket with the lateness of your communication, treated very badly by your team and have not had any further reply to explain how you intend to deal with this given the money for the spa day has already been taken weeks ago. Of course I understand it's a difficult situation for you to have to inform customers but looking at the website and social media now I can see you were aware of the situation on the morning of 4th December. You really should have emailed all customers with bookings over the next few days at that point to make them aware and suggest they follow news to keep an eye on the situation. That would have avoided lots of inconvenience, disruption and wasted time."

Awful awful awful. They cancelled our booking with 20 mins notice, when they knew they had issues 24hrs before. How difficult is it in this day and age to pick up the phone or send a message? We drove 2 hours to visit the spa. Won't be returning. Can't recommend. Shocking lazy customer service. They obviously don't care.

If I could give 0 stars I would.

Lacking compassion and the basic standards for hospitality!

Two friends and I, all college students, have been looking forward to our spa experience all week- booking both a treatment and 2 hour spa package for each of us. We left yesterday morning at 7am to head to the train from London. Due to strikes in London all of the trains leaving to Bath were cancelled. Upon calling and explaining this unfortunate circumstance, they provided no consolation despite our simple request to reschedule for next week, since we understood their no refund policy. They refused to compromise- so much so that their version of trying to compromise was asking us to arrive even earlier than our appointment times. They severely lack compassion and the hospitality described on their website. For three college students, we lost $500 US between the three of us- this was a lot of money to lose that we’d saved and worked for over the last few months in the hopes of having a relaxing day after our midterms.

I am disgusted by this behavior as it is the most publicized spa in Bath, highly reviewed, and the circumstances preventing us from going were completely out of our control.

Meanwhile, other small businesses in Bath were happy to work with us and refund or reschedule as needed.

Decent day out which made us feel refreshed. Bit too expensive for what it is.

The one star I am giving is already way too much may I add!

It was not at all a pleasant spa or resort to go to! It is a waste of my money! And it seems that spa Thermae Bath is all about…. The line of people whom they let in during a slot is never ending. You end up being in every (if available) room be it the rooftop our a sauna room full of other people trying to find a spot! You can not possibly enjoy going to this spa particularly! It was and is a scam to get as many tourists to pay and stay en get out in two hours! You shall not find any relaxtion here. That is the only guarantee that they can give. It is by far way over hyped by influencers!!! You are just being scammed for your money! As a tourist I dearly recommend do not waste your money on this resort! You better make a reservation at a other spa. Where you actually get relaxation and rest! For the Thermae bath spa is clearly NOT worth it!!!

The rooftop pool is beautiful, but the rest... erm. We went on a rainy Thursday afternoon. It wasn't heaving the way some people describe, but it was pretty heavily trafficked. I was really looking forward to a nice sauna, but this infrared thing they have is a ridiculous substitute for the real thing - was sort of tepid unless you sat right in front of a light, whereupon your back was scorched and your front was still cold. (Also, no guidance given at all on sauna etiquette, so every inch of the sauna benches had wet bum prints on it - ew.) The steam rooms managed to be totally utterly over-steamy (we had to walk with hands in front of us because we couldn't see anything) while still being only lukewarm. And the ice room was again zero-visibility from steam with no signage to indicate what it was (we discovered it was the ice room by actually running into the ice trough and feeling to see what it was) and all the ice was melting. The Minerva Bath is just a big swimming pool (with a walled off bubbly section that wasn't any warmer than the rest) basically like you'd find in the cellar of a chain hotel.
So basically, we paid £40 apiece for a swim in a somewhat crowded but admittedly pretty rooftop swimming pool, plus a sauna, steam rooms and swimming pool we wouldn't have paid a penny for, had we known.
(The very small lift did work when we were there - thankfully, as my companion is disabled and would not have been able to manage the stairs - but very slowly and sometimes the door seemed to jam. We were afraid every time we went in it that it'd break down and we'd be stuck.)

Don’t waste your money, it’s a tourist trap. Overcrowded, noisy and NOT relaxing. Was so looking forward to going and couldn’t wait to leave. Such a disappointment and won’t be back.

Wow, I'm really shocked by how many positive reviews this place has. They've entirely misjudged how many guests should be allowed to book in at certain time slots. Every single area was incredibly packed. The roof top pool is gorgeous, but I spent half the time aimlessly floating in the middle of the pool, waiting for someone to give up their space at the side of the pool. The minerva bath is essentially just a pool. The lazy river didn't work, and the "jacuzzi" is incredibly weak.

The majority of guests have very poor spa ettiquette. Splashing around in the pools, talking loudly, or leaving doors wide open as they come/go from the saunas etc. Staff on reception were nice, but the staff that were visible throughout the facility were uninterested. Towels should be more readily available as people were constantly taking ones that don't belong to them.

Didn't love that flip-flops weren't included, or that showers were only a different floor to many of the facilities. Both lifts were also broken, which meant a bit of a workout going between zones...

Not impressed...!

Hot Sunny day 11 th August ..
Booked months in advance and thought it would be a quiet pleasant experience …
Boy was I wrong ..
The rooftop pool that should cater for about 30 people was crowded to a point of being uncomfortable.
The lifts didn’t work , the floors are distances apart and all stairs ..
I felt the whole event was ruined by over capacity again another adventure let down by profit and greed and not by customer experience satisfaction ..

I've visited before and had a pleasant time despite the crowds and not being able to experience some things like the steam room/sauna as way too many people. Trying to book again to return years later and given up as impossible to book online (surely this should be possible in this day and age!) Read the reviews and looks like it's gone downhill big time so not going to bother. Looks like purely a money making project rather than for people's wellbeing.

Staff very u friendly and unhelpful. Mixed changing rooms filthy - there were bits of bloody tissue in the one I had to use and hair on the floor. You have to pay for huge flip flops to avoid walking on the floor. Facilities are accessible only by walking up and down four floors or taking the cold scruffy lift between areas. One steam room was closed. Everywhere was packed full with little space to live in pools or saunas. Horrible to see people coughing up phlegm in one steam room. The worst spa experience ever, and I spent nearly £500 on the three of us for a special birthday - awful.