Kinderhotels - recommendations?

[jaype]

Just wondering what people thought of them and whether they were as good as the brochure would have you believe?

We were thinking about it for the summer. Youngest dd (2) is very ginger fair and loves being outside, so a Med beach holiday might not be ideal until she's old enough to understand that being outdoors 24/7 isn't the best idea with her complexion. The others are 8 & 6 so not so worried about them - they'd enjoy any old thing!

We really rate the Kinderhotels and have stayed at a number of them, in particular the Alpenrose (Lermoos), the Löwe (Serfaus), the Hotel Post (Unken) and the Smiley Hotel (in Trebesing, I think). The Löwe aside, I would recommend any of the ones we have stayed at and I can happily give you some more detailed information if you are considering one of those. DD (now 6.5) loves the activities them and we love the chance for a guilt-free break.

The one thing you do have to take into account though is that the main language at the hotels is German so if your children don't speak German and you hit a week with few other English-speakers, it can be hard for them to break the ice and become really friendly with the other kids. That said, the carers do speak English and seem to do all they can to help everyone get along and have a great time. (Plus, the last couple of times we have been there have been increasing numbers of Brits there anyway.)

Thanks - I think they'd cope, even though none of us speak German past GCSE. We have friends in Norway and the children always seem to play very well with their neighbours, even though they only have about 3 words of English between them and absolutely no Norwegian from our side at all.

We'd like somewhere that offers riding if poss, because it's something they don't do at home. A heated pool would also be a bonus. I did live in Germany when I was small and remember it being quite hot in the summer, but don't want to take any chances.

I'd recommend the Hotel Post in Unken then. Unken is in Austria, but only just over the German border, so close to Munich (where we live!) and Salzburg airports if you're flying in. We stayed there for a week last August and it was brilliant. I would say that I am fairly hard to satisfy, but I would go back to this place anytime.

Good points, in no particular order, were:

• rooms really well thought out. Loads of space for clothes and general paraphernalia. Decent sized bathroom.
• two pools, one heated indoor and then a man-made swimming lake (with long, twisty slide and pedal boats) which was fabulous in hot weather.
• outstanding, all-organic food (bit too good actually, bloat) and the opportunity to sit in- or outside at meals, weather permitting.
• staff all spoke good English and quite a few English mother-tongue visitors while we were there. Hotel daily newsletter and all menus also produced in English as well.
• high carer to child ratio. We were there in mid-August and there were plenty of carers even then and no sense of chaos.
• much of activity program based on finding out about nature, e.g. children went on nature walks and met up with a gamekeeper who showed them a badger's lair and how to recognize certain plants. A woman who was an expert in herbs also came to visit.
• horse-riding available. If I remember, the children had two mornings at the on-site petting zoo and got to do a round on the ponies. You could also book private lessons though, which were reasonably priced.
• free tea and coffee. Seems like a silly thing to mention, but this is often not part of the package in the Kinderhotels and can add to the bill considerably. Also a good wine list, with everything from the moderately priced to the very expensive!
• lots of good stuff to do in the area, e.g. visit Salzburg and also the famous Berchtesgardner Land.
• really clean place. I got talking to the woman who cleaned the room and I could hardly believe the training she'd been put through! She had spray for everything!
• great place for younger kids. Once they get to 10ish many of the activities seemed to take place off-site.
• small, but nice gym for adults with a couple of decent running machines and weights equipment.

Bad points -

• we were not too impressed with the dining room, not because it wasn't well equipped and the staff anything but truly friendly, but it felt a bit dark. To be fair, though, we were there during a week with freakishly hot weather and we were all just yearning to be outside the whole time.
• you can't be absolutely sure of getting a week with fabulous weather because of the location.

Sorry, forgot the link:

www.kinderhotelpost.at/

Sporthotel Achensee is great, best service I've had in any Austrian hotel. Have also stayed at the Hotel Galtenberg and Der Unterschwarzachhof which were both excellent.

Great - thanks! Having had more of a look I am getting sold on Alpenrose or the Sporthotel Achensee... Post in Unken looks a little low down and would like to be right up in the mountains. Like the idea of the Segways at Alpenrose plus trips to Neuschwanstein - went on many trips there when very little and loved it. But the children would also love the riding and golf at Achensee.. Argh, spoilt for choice. Orienteer and RedQueen, what did you like about them?

Oh dear redqueen, we've just booked for a week at the loewe (or its sister the Baer, can't remember which) - what didn't you like about it? Dds will be 3.1 and 5mo if relevant.

Thanks and sorry for hijack op...

No worries - would also like to hear the dirt on Loewe as it looks good but this thread put me off... plus no airport seems close.

Alpenrose:

Good points:

• if I remember correctly, the people who have the Alpenrose set up the Kinderhotel movement and their hotel is very much the "flagship store". I might be wrong in this though.
• staff had good English.
• set in a ring of mountains, so stunning scenery all round . Goods view of the Zugspitze and Daniel mountains. Obviously good walking/hiking country and with cable car a few paces from front door.
• food very good. Coffee and tea included!
• fabulous outdoor jacuzzi alongside outdoor pool. I think the outdoor pool may have been heated. Seem to remember that the indoor one was a bit cool for my taste but generally fine. Also a small boating pool alongside outdoor pool with paddle boats.
• kids indoor soft-play and theatre area is great and they have a "chip" system which causes an alarm to sound if a child tries to leave the play area without consent, so no worries there.
• great indoor "shipwreck"-type water play area with fountain, slides and a lazy river. DD (then aged three/four) loved this, but take Crocs or similar as seem to remember the sand was quite rough.
• lovely outdoor terrace for lounging / taking afternoon tea, and also a very pleasant indoor seating area with lots of large cushy leather sofas.
• "Harry-Potter-esque" play area outside which looks fabulous and most of the older kids seemed to love
• carers seemed very good at getting children of all ages involved. (Our neighbours have just been there for two weeks and even their two year old got a part in the show!)
• can't really comment on staff/kids ratio as I don't remember, but was generally happy with the child care. There definitely seemed to be something for everyone.
• nice seating areas for kids to eat. One (if I remember correctly) based on a Wild West theme and one a medieval (sp?) castle
• low-level fish pond half way along foyer, which all the little kids find fascinating.
• if you have older boys, there is a great bobby-car parcours along part of the hotel rooftop!

Negative points:

• perhaps not the best place if you are claustrophobic as the hotel sits in the valley and the mountains rise up around you. On the one hand the dramatic scenery is amazing, but it can also get a bit oppressive if it rains.
• some of the tables in the dining room are a bit on top of each other. Or maybe we were just unlucky ....
• reception was not manned after 9pm and it was difficult to find a member of staff to help deal with a problem.
• much of the childcare area is in the basement with little natural light, so if a child decides not to take part in e.g.tee-pee building, it might spend the whole afternoon inside. I think our neighbour mentioned there having been some change here recently though.
• the hotel sits at a road junction and although this wasn't a problem with noise you need to be careful not to let the kids dash out when you exit the hotel at the front.

Can't seem to remember much about the room. Think it was a small suite in Alpine style, with a separate room for DD.
I think, BTW, that there is pony riding on offer, but it is at stables nearby and not at the hotel itself.

Tip for Neuschwannstein: book your tickets online in advance or you'll likely have to wait for ages!

Brilliant, thanks! Both Alpenrose and the Sporthotel seem reasonably close to Munich airport, too. Scenery sounds great.

We stayed at the Löwe about two years ago and it really wasn't my cup of tea. The main problems were as follows (no particular order), but take them with a pinch of salt as we stayed there for a ski-ing holiday and many of the problems relate to that:

• The room (a suite) was dark and the storage was poorly thought out. Hardly any hooks, coat hangers you couldn't remove from the racks, bathroom with hardly any shelving for wash bags etc. Cleaner also seemed to have no routine, so came at irregular times, sometimes making it difficult to give DD a nap.
• Reception were staff slow to react and often unfriendly. I appreciate that it was a madly busy week in the winter season, but still.
• Dinner was an extremely drawn out affair with numerous - miniscule - courses. I don't object to this in principle, but not every night. They sort of seemed to be trying too hard. (It was also just the wrong approach for people who are shattered from a day's ski-ing.)
• Bar area unwelcoming. Could have been cosy, but you hardly ever saw people sitting there as fire remained unlit (even in mid-Feb).
• Small outside sitting area is basically grey concrete and situated above a road (OK, Serfaus is traffic-free, but some local traffic still goes past).
• In the water-play area there is a big slide with rubber rings which you sit in to go down. Unfortunately, at the bottom there is a very rough mat and a current strong enough to knock small kids off their feet. I saw at least three kids end up with really bad scrapes (i.e. bleeding) and DD ended up with one across the whole of her upper thigh. Took a good month to heal.
• The water-play areas for the little kids and big kids are together but need separating to prevent the little kids getting knocked over by the big kids.
• I was not so convinced about the child care for the babies. I appreciate that crying babies are hard to console, but I think the carers could sometimes have been more proactive than they seemed to be.
• Tea and coffee not included. If I remember correctly, coffee cost ca. EUR 2.50 per cup.
• I was violently ill for two days while there and I am convinced that whatever it was came from the hotel food as we arrived there on the Saturday and the problem started on the Wednesday without my having eaten anywhere else at all. I also wasn't the only one with the complaint, and it wasn't a virus as only adults seemed to have it.
• I'm not a skier so had planned to use the spa mid-mornings, but was told that it did not open during the day in the winter months, but only after 4pm or so once the skiers got back. Was mightily annoyed. I think it is fair to assume that mothers with very young children (e.g. ones who are still being breast-fed) might not be going ski-ing but want to put their child in childcare for an hour or so while they use the spa in peace during the daytime? No idea what the summer opening times are.
• As far as I can remember, there is no outdoor play area or pool at the Löwe for the summer months. For that you need the Bär. More generally, I think the marketing for the two is poor as it is difficult to establish exactly what is where yet they are quite different hotels.

OK. Rant over.

Actually, you can ignore my comment about there being no outdoor pool. It has just struck me that there's one on the roof. And I think there may be a small sandpit there too, but don't quote me - we were there in winter!

SportHotel Achensee stood out for it's service, so much better than anything previously encountered in Austria (we previously lived in Austria for 5 plus years so were well used to what can be rather 'Germanic' abrupt service ). All the staff were helpful and smiley, for example afternoon tea was not just a help yourself slightly lukewarm coffee, it was an obliging waiter bringing a freshly made Latte, Cappuccino etc. In addition we'd had to cancel a previous holiday on the day of arrival (snow at Heathrow!) and they allowed us to change the date to 4 months later at no extra cost.

Loewe (& Baer) in Serfaus are in very easy reach of Innsbruck airport. I took DS to Serfaus (not Loewe) a couple of years ago and we did a DIY transfer of airport bus to Innsbruck main station (10mins), then express train to Landeck (about 35 mins) then PostBus to Serfaus (about 40mins).

Many thanks Orienteerer! Requested quotes this morning - SportHotel turned it around in about two hours but still waiting on the Alpenrose so think you are right about service and efficiency.

Thanks TheRedQueen, turns out DH has booked us into the Baer so fingers crossed our experience will be a bit better although I agree it's really hard to gauge the differences between the two from the brochures. I wonder whether there have been a few changes since you went - for example, the brochure mentions a choice of buffet or sit-down meal.

jaype - in unlikely event you are still considering Loewe/Baer, the only flights I could find (NB was only looking for flights from South East) were easyjet from Gatwick and they are already quite expensive (£155 one way in late June). We are flying back from Stuttgart as DH is driving home (long boring story) and dropping us off en route. It's a good 3 hours or so away but flights are a lot cheaper.

Ah - we're going in August and live in the SW so all flight related things are a nightmare. Munich looks an easier destination to get to Austria than direct to Innsbruck.

Ktay - good news. Our neighbours (who were there for the third time a week ago!) really rate the Bär and say that it has also just had its status upgraded by the Austrian Tourist Board. It has great location and view too. It's near the main part of the village, but slightly raised up on the hillside behind it.

Ooh that's good to hear. Starting to look forward to it again now!