A restaurant and hotel says it's lost customers after what is claims are fake reviews slamming "awful food" and "rude staff" posted online.

The Grange at Oborne is a country house hotel in the hills of Dorset, just one mile away from Sherborne.

The restaurant is incredibly popular, with a 5-star rating on TripAdvisor.

However, the hotel announced on social media on Friday, March 17, that they had been targeted by "fraudulent reviews" online which tried to paint the restaurant in a bad light.

The post wrote: "Sad, sad times. Where criticism is deserved, we try to learn from the feedback and make changes; we take it on the chin. But when someone is posting fraudulent reviews online, it hurts.

"Someone has left two fake reviews on our hotel listing on TripAdvisor. The reviews concentrate entirely on a visit to the restaurant and describe how the food was awful and the staff were rude.

"Apart from the fact that neither of these things are true, there are various ways in which we can tell they are fake; they claim the owners and head chef were rude to them (my parents, the owners, aren’t involved in the running of the business and don’t see customers and the head chef doesn’t come out and talk to the guests, ever).

"In one of their reviews, they claim to have eaten with us ‘last night’, a night when we had a private party in.

"There is also the fact that almost identical reviews have appeared for competitors in the area (six found so far, still counting). We have spoken to several and they were equally saddened to receive such a malicious review."

The hotel revealed that they are already feeling the damage that the negative reviews had, with 15 people cancelling their booking for today.

They said: "We have already started to receive cancellations; so far we have lost around 15 covers for Saturday.

"Nobody has said that is as a result of the reviews, but cancellations aren’t that common and to come just after receiving two, one-star reviews can’t be a coincidence.

"These terrible reviews have already begun to be buried by the many five-star reviews that we receive, but it is going to take some time before they are far enough down to not have any impact."