Hotel Birke, Ringhotel

Afraid that the hotel didn't meet our expectations at all given the 4s star rating (s=superior) and the price of the facility.

Afraid that the hotel didn't meet our expectations at all given the 4s star rating (s=superior) and the price of the facility.

1. Location – I would say fine, however it is far from downtown. For us this was not an issues, as we got a car. Be aware of parking charge of 9 EUR/day.
2. SPA area – also feels quite old, not so much things to offer apart from a pool and sauna. Looks like they had garden furniture as resting beds. The water in the pool however was a bit on the cold side, and unfortunately, I had some hygiene concerns about the pool, as I saw dirtiness in the water. Sauna is also old in my opinion. Prices in the pool bar are definitely overpriced.
3. Service – this is main problem of this place. The service level is very far from a 4s hotel. One of the front-desk employees who worked in the evening was extremely arrogant, uncooperative and definitely didn’t care about some of the issues I had as a customer. As an example – we had a half-board agreement, which apparently no one in the restaurant knew about, and I was charged as if I am not a guest in the hotel. Every time I had to go to the front-office and explain. Also there were two restaurant facilities, where apparently some vouchers were needed – again no one bothered to tell us and explain where we need to go and what voucher we need. On another case – we offered a child dish ‘Ground beef pasta’ and you can see the photo – this was pasta with tomato soup that they served. Asking where is the beef, the waiter had to go to check with the kitchen and explained that they didn’t have ground beef therefore they served this! A 4s star hotel doesn’t have ground beef and still offers it in the menu?!? Sure… however they even didn’t bother to say that we shouldn’t pay the same price for this 'pasta', they just told me ‘We cannot do anything about it’. There were a few other cases of unprofessional service – delays on orders, forgotten ordered items, lack of cooperation, arrogant attitude by some employees, etc. I can tell for sure that I won’t go back in this place and definitely don't recommend it for families.

Not a family friendly place
We have stayed with hotel Birke last year, which was good. This time however, the experience was very bad.
We received a room, where there must have been some admin or the like above. There was a constant movement and the noise was very loud, which made it hard for us to fall asleep. Once asleep, we had the weirdest experience, as a man (likely an employee) barged in our room in the middle of the night. This woke my wife and made her very scared. He ran away and we barricaded the room for the rest of the night.
When we talked with the staff about this the following morning, they of course apologised and said it could have been a staff person who entered wrongly.
Also the staff in the pool, a gentleman was not really that friendly when he corrected our child, which was being very considerate in the pool.
In general the hotel gives a vibe that it has some good/upper class, but in reality the experience was very bad. This is a shame as we had gotten a good expression last year, but this time it was just bad.