Hotel Madeleine, Obergurgl, Austria

Let’s start with some positive notes; this hotel is situated not far from the ski lift, provides clean rooms, food is a bit old fashioned but OK (not as good as some people say, “flawless” is absolutely overrated! Food from the buffet is cold sometimes), and most of the staff is very friendly. Sandel and Jelka; you are the single stars of this hotel, thank you very-very much! But then the absolute points of improvement: let’s start with the owner of the hotel. In summary; she is rude (she feels no need to introduce herself to new guests), unfriendly and last but not least absolutely NOT service-minded. In an hotel of this kind, service needs to be the absolute number one. We visited hotel Madeleine a few weeks ago with a 7 months old baby. Because we wanted to be prepared for our very first holiday with our son well, we called the hotel well ahead to make sure the babymonitor would work from the hotel room to the restaurant. To be absolutely sure, we asked a relative who is a native German speaker to do the phonecall without the risk of miscommunication. The owner told that it wouldn’t be any problem, it was not possible to book a specific table but than again, there was no need to do so. To be sure, we brought our babymonitor, WiFi camera and tablet, so we had a choice if necessary. Once we were in the hotel, it turned out that our family was placed at a table at the absolute end of the restaurant, with no connection to the babymonitor and no WiFi connection to let our babymonitor app work. As you can imagine: quit a disaster for the moment and lots of unbelief since we did so much effort to check it in advance. So we kindly asked the owner if it would be possible to shift our family to another table in the front of the restaurant WITH connection to our babymonitor AND WiFi. The answer was short and brutal: NO. Guests were having the same tables for many years and it was not her problem, she only provides rooms and food. The rest was non of her business and unfortunately she was not even able to think with us about a possible solution. On contrary, after a civilized discussion she told us it might be better if we could go and find another hotel, “she wouldn’t charge us” (really?!?!). My first night in the hotel ended in my hotel room with dinner on our couch. What a good start of our holiday.... The rest of the week we had to go to our room for like every 10 minutes to check our son. Well actually she was right about one thing at least: the only thing this hotel provides are rooms and food. Don’t expect anything more like atmosphere in the bar and service. We will never ever visit this hotel again.