John Brady's Weblog

During August we were lucky enough to have two holidays away.
While both were very enjoyable in their own way, they could not have been more different in style and experience.

The first was to the Oceania Club in Greece.
This is an all inclusive hotel resort on the Halkidiki pensinsula, in the north east part of the mainland.
The hotel was very new and very good, and the service and food was excellent.
It is a family oriented hotel, and so was full of families with children.
The hotel runs its own kids clubs, to keep the children entertained during the day.
And the weather was hot, which is to be expected.
So the family had a really good, enjoyable holiday.

Although we did not do much - just lie around on sun loungers in the hot sunshine each day, by the pool or beach - it was a very good and relaxing holiday.
As said, the hotel was very good, and the food and service were excellent.
The attitude of all of the hotel staff was excellent - always helpful, asking if there was anything they could do for you, and nothing was too much trouble.
In many respects, it would be difficult to pick real faults with the hotel.
Although not perfect, it lived up to expectations, and generally exceeded them.
Little details, like a sun umbrella for every pair of sun loungers.
This is important when you have children and want to ensure they do not
get too much sun exposure.

The second holiday was to the highlands of Scotland, staying at the Crieff Hydro Hotel, which is just west of Perth.
The hotel advertises itself very much as a family oriented hotel with child friendly facilities.
Initially we were impressed on arrival by the substantial main, old building of the hotel itself. But then things went downhill quickly.

The room we were allocated was essentially in the basement, at the extreme edge of the hotel. We had to walk down flights of stairs and along long corridors, including going past the leisure facilities, to get to our room. It was one of only three at this end of the hotel. Yes, we did have normal windows and an outside view, due to the hotel being sited on a hill. But it didn't stop the feeling of being in the basement and isolated as you negotiated the stairs each and every day.

The room itself was very old and tired, with a very small bathroom (I could reach out and touch both side walls at the same time). And they called this an 'executive family room'. I suppose this was because the main bedroom area was large. But then we discovered dust in the corner, dead flies under the windows, crumbs under the beds, and worst of all - someone else's clothes in one of the drawers! Needless to say we complained like mad to the hotel duty manager.
Although he apologised profusely, all he did was arrange for the room to be cleaned again. "Why wasn't it cleaned properly in the first place?"
He couldn't offer any explanation at all.
He claimed rooms were always cleaned, so this should not have happened.
But the point was it did happen, and they had not cleaned the room properly before giving it to us.

They would not offer us another room, as they said they were full during the main holiday period. They did give us a free bottle of wine with our meal that evening, but that was all. Considering the price I was paying for this executive room, they were making a lot of money off me, and couldn't be bothered to offer a better level of customer service beyond just a verbal apology and fixing something that should never have happened in the first place.

The rest of the hotel was okay, but being family oriented meant lots of screaming children running around the place.
Which is fine to a point, as we were there with our children too. But in an old hotel building with narrow corridors, it did seem crowded some of the time.
And the indoor swimming pool was full of children most of the day too.
Although the facilities offered make quite a long list, the actual quality of them is only just 'okay', and some of them are so far away from the hotel as to not be worth bothering with.

Evening meals were 'interesting'. There are two restaurants. One is more formal, which they try and attract outside customers to, and the other is informal, casual. Children were allowed in both restaurants, which was good.
Perversely the informal restaurant had a worse choice of food on offer for children than the formal restaurant. Yes, we have a 'modern' child who is quite happy eating things like 'chicken nuggets', but not pizza or anything with cheese on it. The only thing he could eat on the informal menu was a baked potato. And the children's menu was fixed, and never changed in this restaurant. As a result we ate in the formal restaurant each night, which did offer a different children's menu each night.

Overall the hotel came out barely okay - I'd give it 5 out of 10, but only because of the number of facilities offered. But the quality of everything is very dubious, there is no concept of customer service at all, the prices are a rip off (read very expensive), and they are spending more money on more child specific facilities in order to charge you even more in the future. If only they could run it like a real hotel, and have a proper house cleaning operation where rooms were checked for cleanliness. Then things might be quite different. But really it felt more like some kind of production line, where they wheel guests in, don't treat them in any special way or care about their experience, and take as much money off them as they can for the right to be there.

I certainly won't be going back there. There is no way I would consider staying at a hotel that fundamentally did not know how to clean its rooms properly (something I consider to be a 'basic' aspect of a hotel), did not check that rooms were cleaned properly before new guests arrived, and had a level of customer service that amounted to "We are sorry, but we aren't going to actually do anything to make up for a wholly inadequate level of service to you".

In spite of all that, we did have a nice holiday. Scotland is a wonderful place, which is why we went there. And that rescued the holiday for us.
Next time we go back to the highlands we shall simply stay in another hotel,
save a lot of money, and have a far better and more pleasant experience.

Now of course, we are all back to the normal work routine again, and the children are back at school. Life carries on ...