Wastlwirt, St. Michael im Lungau, Austria***

For a customer event, I stayed one night in this hotel. The room was quite large, with a double bed, a separate walk-in closet in the hallway and a large bathroom.

The room was ok, however you can tell everything is relatively old. The bathtub/shower would likely be an issue just getting into for people that aren’t very flexible. It showed some mildew growth on the silicone in the back. There wasn’t a sliding shower door; instead, it was a multi-panel fold-out job that I popped the handle off the first time I tried moving it. After jostling it free, I was able to shower, but it ended up leaking lots of water onto the floor that I wasn’t able to contain with the towel. A floor mat wasn’t provided.

The door to the small balcony also seemed quite ancient - instead of a regular door handle to turn, you have to move a lever on the hinge side 180° down, which lifts the door a few cm so that you can open it. It won’t stay shut without the lever being up and you get quite a bit of noise through the seams from the road below.

The carpets were worn to the point where I would have replaced them and the furniture showed its age. Really annoying was a round, glass table in front of the two-seater sofa that always seemed to be in the way. When I moved it, the glass top came off; not sure if it was just resting on the frame.

This didn’t bother me, as I rarely watch TV in a hotel room, but the TV is opposite the couch. You can’t see it from the bed, unless you lie the wrong way round and play contortionist. A colleague ended up falling asleep on the couch which probably didn’t help his back any.

Breakfast was very good, with “all the fixings”, including a made-to-order eggs and omlett cook. Unfortunately, it is so spread out in different parts of a longish room that I ended up doing quite a bit of searching to find everything. There were four of us in the hotel and we ended up finding each other after a bit of a search, as the tables are spread over several rooms. Towards the end of breakfast, one of the waiters came over, snorted “I had a table set up for you” at us, threw four name signs on one of the tables we were sitting at and walked away. Wow, really made feel welcome…

The hotel shows signs of age all the way through; I actually found the time to go to the sauna in the evening. The benches you sit on were wobbly and moved more than I felt comfortable with. With the supplied slippers (they were on the bed along with a bath robe), I nearly fell on the wet floor; I probably wasn’t the only one. The only place to go outside to cool off is the back entrance to the sauna area, so you’re basically standing on the back lawn of the hotel. While it isn’t visible from the road, it is from the surrounding buildings, so keep your towel on.

The “wellness” area has a rather small sauna (no more than 5 people), a steam bath, three showers, a solarium, a pool and a resting room. Towels are provided, albeit rather small ones. Again, the floor in one section is extremely slippery and needs to be stepped on with extreme care.

The reception is only staffed until 10PM; if you’re going out, you need to take your key with you. This wouldn’t be an issue except for the ridiculously large and heavy key fob. I guessed it at about a Kilo and it was larger than my hand!

As our company paid for the rooms, I have no idea what they cost, but I would recommend the hotel only if you can’t find a different hotel at a reasonable rate.
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