The “A Daycation in…” series is one I was planning to start in 2025, to showcase some of the best and most interesting places around Dorset and Hampshire, delving into what elevates something from a mere “day out” to a “daycation”. But I got started a bit earlier than planned, because Bournemouth hotel The Nici was offering a special winter deal on day-only packages. I’ve been wanting to go to The Nici ever since it opened and even more so since it opened its spa, so it seemed only right to go and do their daycation, especially as it was their new shiny word, “daycation”, I was planning on stealing (Oh, don’t worry – they’re not the first to come up with it, it’s just the first time I’ve seen it, and I’m well aware of how far behind the times I am. Coming in 2026, have you heard of a “staycation”?).
Bournemouth’s hotels have a bit of a reputation for being… well, a bit past their best, let’s say. They’re all a bit run down, a bit shabby and a lot dated. If you want a good hotel in Bournemouth, you either pay big for a few stars like the Hilton or you stay somewhere boring and anonymous but reliable, like the Premier Inn. But then The Nici came along somewhere around 2022, taking over the old and tired Savoy Hotel premises, rejuvenating it almost beyond recognition and flying off with the metaphorical trophy for far and away the best destination hotel in Bournemouth. Formal gardens became a Miami-inspired swimming pool pointing directly at the sea, rooms with sage-green walls and off-pink ruffled curtains became sleek and modern, every bed sprouted a grass-green velvety runner, fittings became gold and the bathrooms became a riot of white and teal mini-tiles with more gold fittings. Quite frankly, I would steal every element of that bathroom design for my own house. So I’ve been looking at it covetously ever since.
It’s a little out of my price range for a stay but it has regular offers and at one point, I was going to go there just for a one-night mid-week break just for the joy of staying there if one of those offers was just a little lower. And then along came the daycation, which offers eight hours in their new and shiny spa plus a two-course meal in their Art Deco-inspired South Beach restaurant for £65. So of course off I went! And so, the moment she heard about it, did my sister.
The first orange flag was that this package includes three hours’ free parking and that the only further information the website could give about the other five hours we’d be there was that The Nici charges £27 per night for parking. We eventually – two of us, remember – managed to dig out that’s it’s £5 per hour. So £25 for parking. Might as well have stayed the night, really. I parked a mile away at Central car park for £6.10; she managed to find a free space on the next road.
But fine, we’d figured that out and I’d got my daily walk in before my spa day. And it was nice. We were given towels, robes and slippers, the changing rooms are impeccable – apart from, orange flag number two, there only being two changing cubicles. In Iceland that’s pretty standard but in a British seaside resort hotel, starting the day with public nakedness isn’t a particularly appealing thing.
The indoor spa is very nice, dominated by a long shallow pool just deep enough and long enough to swim slow langourous lengths. It’s not an obnoxiously bright blue either, being lined with tiles that are mostly off- white with just enough blues to give it a subtle colour and a few iridescent tiles that sparkle under the low lighting. At the far end is a small sauna and a small steam room and at the opposite end, a sunken hot tub big enough to comfortably seat ten, with optional jets. Down the side of the room are loungers, separated into pairs by curtains patterned with watercolour sea creatures. The other wall has irregular narrow vertical windows in it, letting in some natural light without making it too obvious the pool overlooks the car park.
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I’ve been to various spas and hot water experiences in my time. This is as tasteful and grown-up as any I’ve ever seen and could be very pleasant and peaceful if hotel guests maybe didn’t bring their children in. Or if they did, maybe they need to understand that this is a quiet adult relaxing place and not a waterpark. We retreated to the outside pool.
The pool replaced the Savoy’s rather tired semi-formal gardens during the renovation. It’s a bit of a labyrinth escaping the spa via the hotel toilets, the stairs and two right-turns in carpeted corridors – it will never feel natural scurrying on carpet wearing a damp dressing gown – and then you’re almost in the garden rooms, which have their own outdoor jacuzzis on the terrace. I’d asked about the outdoor pool on arrival; namely was it open and was it a temperature I’d want to go anywhere near? Yes to both. Like the indoor pool, it’s long and narrow, patterned subtly in green rather than blue in the same way that makes it very hard to tell where the shallow bathing area abruptly drops into deeper swimming area and where are the steps that take you down that drop more comfortably.
I had never expected to swim in an outdoor hotel pool in Bournemouth in November but there we were. It wasn’t hot bath temperature but it was very tolerable indeed for an outdoor pool. We spent probably an hour bobbing from one end to the other. Unsurprisingly, not many people ventured out. It was a beautiful day, blue sky and sunshine and I still didn’t need my coat during the day but the fact that the calendar said we were more than halfway through November kept people to the indoor pool.
The Nici is on the clifftop to the west of central Bournemouth – the Pier, the gardens, the theatres, the shopping streets etc. There are gardens beyond the end of the pool which you can’t see because they drop away a bit but through the trees, you can see the white cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck and even Old Harry Rocks. Next to the pool is The Nici’s new restaurant, also named Old Harry Rocks; a little more laid-back than the one inside the hotel. It has a huge wood-fired pizza oven outside, painted in the swirling pastels of the hotel, although the restaurant is semi-independent, with its own door further down the road so you don’t have to come through the hotel building or grounds to get to it. The second time we came out, there was a group of girls, presumably on a hen do, drinking champagne from the bar in the pool, while getting the only other swimmer to take photos of them. I had visions of post-Daycation pizza in there later on.
By the time lunch came, we were more or less ready to get out. The indoor facilities are very beautiful but there’s only so long even I can swim in a single pool, dip in a single – slightly underheated, in my opinion – hot tub and sit in a small sauna and steam room. The outdoor pool is a delight and the uncontested highlight as far as I’m concerned but eight hours is a long time to stay there. Besides, we’d gone from indoor spa to outdoor pool so many times that the robes and slippers were soaking wet, very cold and the robe weighed about as much as I do. Pre-warned by reading reviews, we got dried and dressed and went to South Beach restaurant.
This place mixes formality and whimsy in an interesting way. The classy formal way is monochrome and beige neutrals, with maybe a dark green for a bit of variety. South Beach has orange napkins and gold cutlery, green glass water jugs, bench seating striped in green and white, comfy armchairs in orange and brown swirls and waiters in off-white chinos rather than black suits. They were able easily and comfortably to cater to my dietary requirements and my sister had the roast beef from the menu, which “has a lot more beef than you’d normally get” and surprise vegetables hiding under the Yorkshire pudding and gravy. Our package meant choosing from the £25 two-course Sunday menu but you could upgrade to get the third course as well if you wanted.
Pudding was a bit more mixed. I – normally an ice cream or chocolate brownie girl – went for the chocolate mess, which was a square of something mousse-like on a brownie-like base, topped with something crunchy, surrounded by swirls of toffee sauce, accompanied by an oval of salted caramel ice cream and decorated with biscuit crumbs. Being a simple soul, and eating it with a gold spoon, this all seemed quite sophisticated. My sister had the sticky toffee pudding, which she deemed “fine” but “if I’d just ordered this, I’d be disappointed”. We investigated the various menus on the website to find an individual price for it, which turned out to be £9 on the Sweets menu (“No.”).
Rather than put wet swimwear back on and get back into heavy wet robes, we called it a day. It was gone 3.30 by then, so we didn’t have a lot of our eight hours left anyway. I stopped on South Beach’s outdoor.. jetty? It sticks out perpendicular to the terrace and steps lead down from it almost to the pool and must be a lovely place for a drink when it’s not November. Even in November, it’s a good place to take some pictures of the outdoor pool. That done, we returned to the spa to collect our bags and go into Bournemouth. A walk around the Christmas market, illuminated tree trail, ride on the big wheel and an hour ice skating was a wonderful way for me to finish off my big day out but let’s confine this to The Nici.
I enjoyed it. I’m glad I went. I want to stay in one of those rooms with a private jacuzzi. But I might not go for a full Daycation again, unless I added in a treatment to break up the time. I suspect that’s why the Daycation package is so cheap, in the hope that people will look at eight hours and shell out for a massage. The Nici offers various other packages, all including a meal and treatment and I’d personally rather have a shorter time for a lower price with nothing but spa access included, which is something they don’t currently offer. As a way to fill an evening while staying there, I think the spa is pretty flawless but it’s a bit basic for a full day. I also suspect the Daycation package and various room offers exist because this gorgeous hotel isn’t doing quite as well as it hoped and has to resort to enticing people through the door. I hope it does thrive, though – Bournemouth is very short on good hotels and I think this deserves a place at the top of the local hierarchy.
I Am A Polar Bear 