Hot tub lodges in the UK and what they cost

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Type "hot tub" into a holiday park's search and the cheapest result is rarely the timber lodge you had in mind. On 9 November the lowest hot tub price Away ResortsAway ResortsAway Resorts runs UK holiday parks with caravans, lodges, holiday homes and touring pitches, from Cornwall and the Isle of Wight to Wales and Scotland. Any live codes are listed he2 current offers · View store → showed for Tattershall Lakes, £146 for two nights from 10 November, belonged to a Superior Caravan with a tub on its deck. On the Isle of Wight, the cheapest hot tub stay I took as far as the basket for the same dates was a two-bedroom chalet at Whitecliff Bay for £112.80. Both are perfectly good breaks. Neither is a lodge.

So I priced real dates this November and January with two park operators that sell hot tub stays direct, Away Resorts and SShorefield HolidaysShorefield HolidaysShorefield Holidays runs eight parks across Dorset and Hampshire, offering caravans, lodges, treehouses, glamping and touring pitches. It is a family business that has welcomed gue8 current offers · View store →, and put the dog, the towels, the deposit and the cancellation terms beside each price. The best value I found was a three-bedroom Away lodge at Whitecliff Bay for £244 for four nights in January, about £61 a night before the ferry. The most dependable hot tubs were Shorefield's, where every Superior and Signature lodge has one, though its parks close for most of January.

Lodge, caravan or chalet?

The words get used loosely, and the law doesn't help. A twin-unit lodge built in two halves and joined on site is still a caravan under the Caravan Sites Act 1968, as long as it can be moved by road and stays within 20 metres long, 6.8 metres wide and 3.05 metres high inside.

The difference that matters in winter is how it's built. The manufacturer Willerby describes a static caravan as a single unit about 10 to 14 feet wide, mostly built to EN 1647, and a lodge as a twin unit 16 to 22 feet wide, mostly built to BS 3632. BS 3632 is the British residential standard, suitable for year-round use where the site's licence allows it, while EN 1647 is the European standard for holiday homes used seasonally. For a January break, that's the line I'd care about more than the name on the listing.

Away offers hot tubs on six grades, from Value to Exclusive, and on caravans, chalets and cottages as well as lodges. Its hot tub page adds that these come "on selected units, subject to availability", and only a few named units carry a guaranteed hot tub badge. Each unit's own details list "Hot Tub: Yes" when it has one, and that line, along with the word lodge in the unit's name, is what I'd want to see before paying.

Away Resorts: hot tubs at 21 parks

Away Resorts says it runs 25 parks, and 21 of them list hot tub accommodation, from Cornwall and the Isle of Wight to Lincolnshire, Wales and Scotland. The design-led units have names: The Butterfly is new for 2026 at St Ives Bay and sleeps six, The Knightwood at Sandy Balls sleeps eight, Serpentine is only at Clumber Park, and TriBeCa, Rockstar and Shadow Wood appear at several parks.

The cheapest lodge I took to the basket was a two-bedroom Superior Lodge at Tattershall Lakes in Lincolnshire, dog friendly and sleeping six, for £170.40 from Tuesday 10 to Thursday 12 November. Arrivals are any day of the week with a two-night minimum, check-in is 4pm (2:30pm for Exclusive grades) and check-out is 10am.

Away's terms include bed linen, gas and electricity, and the facilities pass when you book direct. Towels only come with Luxury, Indulgent and Exclusive grades; a pack of six was £18 at the extras step. A log burner comes with one starter log, extra logs are sold at reception, and bringing your own is banned.

Away scored 75% in Which?'s 2026 survey of holiday park customers, from 113 people, with four stars for cleanliness and three for facilities. On Trustpilot it had 2.5 from 9,035 reviews on 9 November, and Trustpilot's own summary of them dwells on cleanliness and maintenance. Across 25 parks, I read that as a reason to look at recent reviews of the specific park rather than the brand.

The Isle of Wight

Away has four hot tub parks on the island: Whitecliff Bay near Bembridge, The Lakes at Rookley, The Bay at Colwell and St Helens. The ferry isn't included, which matters when the lodge itself is this cheap. A three-bedroom Luxury Lodge at Whitecliff Bay, dog friendly, sleeping eight and with its own hot tub, came to £244 in the basket for Monday 11 to Friday 15 January. An Exclusive Seaview Lodge on the same park showed £252 for the same dates.

Winter availability on the island is patchy. St Helens showed no results at all for mid-November or January when I searched, and Colwell had no hot tub stays in mid-January.

St Ives Bay, Cornwall

St Ives Bay sits in the dunes at Hayle. The Shadow Wood there, two bedrooms and sleeping eight, came to £316 in the basket for 11 to 15 January, but it doesn't take dogs. The dog-friendly Stargazer with Seaview showed £341 for three nights from Friday 15 January. Godrevy, at the eastern end of the same bay, is where my winter coastal walks guide goes to watch grey seals at Mutton Cove.

Hayling Island and the New Forest

At Mill Rythe on Hayling Island, an Exclusive Lodge with Nature Reserve View showed £368 for 11 to 15 January, and a Luxury Caravan with a tub £280 for the same four nights. Sandy Balls, on the edge of the New Forest, is where The Knightwood sits, one of the few units Away badges as having a guaranteed hot tub.

Shorefield: every Superior and Signature lodge has a tub

Shorefield Holidays is a much smaller operator, with seven locations between the New Forest and Swanage. What I like is how plainly it sells the hot tub: "Our Superior and Signature lodges all have hot tubs", says its lodge page, so the grade tells you, rather than unit by unit. Hot tub lodges are at Merley Court, Oakdene, Shorefield Country Park and Swanage, sleeping two to eight, and there are hot tub caravans and treehouses too. Oakdene and Shorefield also have communal hot tubs in their indoor pools.

Shorefield's November prices were higher than Away's, with towels in the price. A two-bedroom Superior+ Lodge at Swanage Coastal Park, sleeping four, was £383.88 for Monday 16 to Friday 20 November, and the same price held for the following two weeks and the week of 14 December. A two-bedroom Signature Lodge at Merley Court was £393.24 for the same November week. Shorefield calls Merley Court secluded: check-in is online, there's no reception, and guests use a sister park's facilities. Swanage sits on the same Jurassic Coast as Durdle Door, which also has a section in the coastal walks guide.

Towels are included in hot tub accommodation, picking a specific lodge costs £50, and there's a refundable security deposit of up to £250 (terms). The thing to plan around is the calendar: Shorefield's FAQs say all its parks close from early January to early February, and Swanage and Wilksworth stay shut until 1 March.

Which? customers gave Shorefield 76%, though from a small sample of 49 people and with three stars for cleanliness. On 9 November, its store page listed an extra 5% off self-catering for new bookings.

Is the hot tub clean, and will it be hot?

A hot tub on a rented holiday unit is a business activity under health and safety law, and the Health and Safety Executive's guidance, HSG282, sets out what that means: the water drained, cleaned and refilled after each rental or weekly, whichever comes first, clarity, pH and disinfectant checked at least twice a day, monthly microbiological tests and quarterly legionella tests. The reason is in the NHS's page on Legionnaires' disease, which lists hot tubs among the places you can catch it, by breathing in droplets of water.

That draining has a cost the brochures don't show. Away's terms say tubs are emptied and refilled between lettings, so heat on arrival isn't guaranteed, and Shorefield warns the same, especially in colder months. The YouTube couple Exploring Edwards found exactly that at Away's Retallack park, in a video posted in February 2025: the tub at their barn was still lukewarm about 21 hours after they arrived. They say Away sent someone quickly and refunded a night.

Cloudy water is the warning sign HSE names, and it lists a pump failure, the wrong dosing, filter problems or bacterial growth among the causes. In a thread on r/hottub, the top reply said the water should be clear to the bottom, with no smell and no foam, and others in the thread said to complain before getting in.

The rules on the tub are similar everywhere. HSE's example notice for bathers says no more than 15 minutes at a time, not after a heavy meal or alcohol, medical advice first if you're pregnant, and no children under four; RoSPA says no under-fives. Away adds no use after 11pm and no glass, pets, bubble bath or oils. The UK hot tub trade body BISHTA advises that water above 40°C is potentially harmful, as reported by EuroSpaPoolNews.

When is it cheapest?

Outside school holidays, by a long way. A two-bedroom Signature Lodge at Merley Court that cost £393.24 for four nights in mid-November was £703.14 for the February half-term week, 15 to 19 February. At Swanage, the Superior+ Lodge that was £383.88 in November was £980.76 over Christmas.

The pattern holds well beyond hot tubs. Aimee and Mike, in their video of a dog-friendly stay at Away's Sandy Balls, say they paid £225 for four nights including the dog, against £840 for the same unit in the second week of July. Their unit doesn't appear to have had a tub, but the gap is the point.

Midweek beats weekends too. HoseasonsHoseasonsHoseasons is a long-running UK self-catering specialist, founded in 1944, with lodges, holiday parks, cottages and boat holidays across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern IrelanBuying guide · View store → says Monday arrivals for four nights and Friday arrivals for three have the best availability, and Forest Holidays and Center Parcs build their short breaks around those same two. Away takes arrivals on any day with a two-night minimum, which makes a Tuesday-to-Thursday trip easy. MoneySavingExpert's Center Parcs example shows how sharp the school-holiday line is: one lodge at £2,228 in the last week of August 2027 and £1,208 a week later.

Prices at the other end can still be steep. A 2022 thread on r/AskUK opened with a poster finding nothing under £600 for two nights, and one reply put it down to the premium a hot tub or log burner carries.

Bringing the dog

Away charges a flat £45 per break for a dog on stays of up to six nights, or £60 for seven nights or more, with two dogs at most. Dog-friendly units have "(Pet Friendly)" in their names, and the dog-friendly hot tub prices I saw at Retallack and St Ives Bay were exactly £45 above the prices without a dog. Plenty of hot tub units don't take dogs at all, and Away's terms keep dogs out of the tub.

Shorefield says all its parks are pet friendly, in designated units, and its Signature+ lodges at Shorefield Country Park and Oakdene come with an enclosed garden and a shower for the dog. The fee is less clear: its lodge page says £9 per pet per day in self-catering, while its search boxes say £3 a night. Over four nights that's the difference between £12 and £36, so it's worth seeing which one the booking shows.

Forest Holidays charges £15 per pet per night, has dog-friendly cabins at every location, and asks that neither pets nor children under four go in the tub. If the dog is the reason for the trip, my guide to wellies worth buying for dog walks covers the other half of the packing.

Booking, deposits and cancelling

Holiday accommodation booked for set dates has no 14-day cooling-off period: the Consumer Contracts Regulations exclude it, and Citizens Advice confirms that cancelling usually costs money. So the park's own terms decide what you get back, and the two differ a lot.

Travel insurance can cover a UK trip, but MoneySavingExpert says policies usually need at least two consecutive nights of booked accommodation, and some only count trips more than 25 miles from home. A lodge on its own also isn't a package holiday under the Package Travel Regulations, so a complaint goes to the park, not a tour operator.

Other places with hot tubs

Forest Holidays is the simplest choice if a private tub is the whole point: every cabin across its 13 locations has one on its decking except The Nest at Delamere, and it says the tubs are cleaned daily. On 9 November its cheapest four-night breaks from 16 November were £385 at the Forest of Dean, Keldy and Thorpe Forest. Which? customers gave it 72%, with two stars for facilities.

At Center Parcs, hot tubs come only with the top tiers: Exclusive Lodges, Treehouses, Waterside Lodges at Elveden, and some new three-bedroom Forest Lodges at Whinfell, Sherwood, Longleat and Woburn. Haven has hot tub lodges at just one park, Golden Sands in Mablethorpe, plus Beach Houses at Perran Sands in Cornwall.

Hoseasons is an agent rather than a park operator, so the contract is with each park, and it charges a booking fee. Its hot tub collection is the biggest I found, at 11,107 units by its own count.

For a cottage rather than a park, the Hideaways sites each keep a hot tub list. On 9 November, Norfolk HideawaysNorfolk HideawaysNorfolk Hideaways is a self-catering holiday cottage agency covering the Norfolk coast and countryside. Its portfolio ranges from compact cottages for two to large houses for familBuying guide · View store → had 37, Cotswolds HideawaysCotswolds HideawaysCotswolds Hideaways is a holiday cottage agency rather than a shop, and its listings are self-catering cottages across the Cotswolds. Its collection runs from small cottages for twBuying guide · View store → 31, Dorset HideawaysDorset HideawaysDorset Hideaways is a holiday cottage agency with a collection of coastal and countryside properties across Dorset. It suits people who want a self-catering base for a couple, a faBuying guide · View store → 15, Cornwall HideawaysCornwall HideawaysCornwall Hideaways lists holiday cottages across Cornwall, from coastal retreats to countryside properties. Its booking site lets you search by location, dog-friendly stays and speBuying guide · View store → 14 and Suffolk HideawaysSuffolk HideawaysSuffolk Hideaways is a holiday cottage letting agency focused on Suffolk, with a portfolio of coastal and countryside properties. Its range runs from small cottages for a romantic Buying guide · View store → 11. Not every tub is in the price: The Cricket Pavilion at Warham, on the Norfolk list, charges extra for its wood-fired one. More holiday and travel shops are in our Travel section.

Where I'd book

Two quick questions first, since I'd like to know what readers weigh up when they choose.

For a real lodge under £100 a night this winter, I'd look at Away ResortsAway ResortsAway Resorts runs UK holiday parks with caravans, lodges, holiday homes and touring pitches, from Cornwall and the Isle of Wight to Wales and Scotland. Any live codes are listed he2 current offers · View store → in January, Whitecliff Bay above all, with the ferry costed in and a check that the unit says lodge and "Hot Tub: Yes". For a tub I could count on, towels in the price and a quieter stretch of coast, I'd book SShorefield HolidaysShorefield HolidaysShorefield Holidays runs eight parks across Dorset and Hampshire, offering caravans, lodges, treehouses, glamping and touring pitches. It is a family business that has welcomed gue8 current offers · View store → for late November or early December, before its parks close. And whichever I chose, I'd go midweek, outside school holidays, and read the cancellation terms before paying the deposit rather than after.

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