Lovely room and bathroom very large and well appointed. Cleanliness excellent and quiet. Food OK - My partner likes a full English and eggs were either scrambled or boiled, no baked beans, hash browns or sausages, the bacon was smoked and the potato option was very spicy so a little disappointing. I like scrambled egg with tomato and mushrooms and the tomatoes were covered in cheese! and the mushrooms wet and spicy! All other breakfast options were plentiful and good. The main meals were of limited choice and the quality went from good on the 1st evening to poor on the third and last evening. The soups were far too salty and a bread roll would have been appreciated. The accompaniment to the main meal was always chips and salad which were good and plentiful but some vegetables would have been good. Staff service was always good and friendly.
The hotel is set in a nice location in the country and a 20 minute walk from the train station which was ok for me, even if it was uphill which is weird in NL ! Check-in was weird, for some reason the two people were talking about us in Dutch and laughing at us, nice welcome. There were three of us arriving at 14:30 but our room wouldn’t be ready until 15:00 so the individually stored our bags, which was weird. My colleagues wanted to use the gym, but despite the fact we were there for almost a week there were no slots…..weird, later found out the hotel had leased the gym to a fitness trainer - why not be honest about it! Rooms have almost no sound deadening, TV didn’t work, no hand soap in the room and piece of foam for a bed wasn’t the best, I guess from that perspective you get what you pay for. Most of the bar staff and waiter staff were brilliant, great personalities and wanted to do their best for you which was nice. The food was a bit patchy and got the impression they were struggling in the kitchen, no different to many hotels and mostly ok, my group had to reject a couple of steaks, but was dealt with reasonable professionally. The meeting room was tight and a bit dangerous from the perspective the laptop power points were on the wall and created quite some trip hazard and the overhead projector build had seen better days and made the colours wishy washy. And now for the downright ugly, now I do get that hotels are struggling to recruit in current climate, but why would you put your worst employee on reception! We had an American VIP join out meeting, he only drinks Coke, as there was no one in the bar area I asked if reception could help. He said he could, promptly brought two bottles of Coke but then told me that I wasn’t “authorised” to put this on my room and I needed to pay cash. I tried to reason with this person that I didn’t have cash on me and as we were spending in the region of 15,000€ with the hotel perhaps he could either add it to the meeting room cost, or food and beverage cost. He told me that he was not prepared to do so! He summoned a colleague from back office and she agreed the only option as I had no cash on me was to leave with the Coke. I was rather upset by this treatment and to my discredit I raised my voice, and despite a colleague was on the phone to potentially another guest and there was a queue behind me, they simply didn’t care and it was more important to them that they didn’t release the Coke with payment ! I left shocked, then entered the kitchen to find the bar staff cleaning dishes as they we short staffed, which I understand, and her comment was “ I don’t know how to charge you for the Coke, but you take it and I’ll figure it out”. Give this lady a promotion and send the clowns on reception to wash the dishes.