FOUR STARS FOR THE THREE SWANS? (Hotel Drei Schwanen (Germany))

Member Name: Richada

Product:	Hotel Drei Schwanen (Germany)
Date:	27/02/08 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb Food. Large Room. Very Attractive En-Suite Bathroom.

Disadvantages: No Air Conditioning. Mini-Bar Not Working. No Secure Parking. Limited Facilities.

WHY DID WE BOOK THE HOTEL DREI SCHWANEN?

The honest answer is because we could not find a room anywhere else in the area, that area being along the E40 (A4) Autobahn in Saxony, Eastern Germany. We usually stay in Dresden, if we're lucky at the NH, otherwise at the Park Plaza Hotel. Leaving the booking unusually late - normally we book in January, once our summer travel plans are fixed - we discovered that in mid-March, when we attempted to do it this year, all of the hotel rooms in Dresden were occupied on that particular night.

We needed overnight accommodation for our return trip from Poland on Saturday 9th June (2007). Mrs R and I would not have been so insistent on stopping, but we had her thirteen year old sister with us too, an 1150 mile journey in "one hit" is hardly appropriate with a youngster in tow.

The search for a hotel had spread out to the west along our route, I suggested that we try Chemnitz, a town approximately 60km (40 miles) closer to home than Dresden. After several searches, www.travelres.com came up with the Hotel Drei Schwanen (Three Swans) in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, a small town close to Chemnitz, but even closer to the Autobahn.

HOTEL DESCRIPTION / OUR PERCEPTION FROM HOTEL PUBLICITY

Mrs R was particularly taken with the appearance of this hotel - which from the photographs and information on the website had a decidedly old world charm to it. Certainly it looked very different to the chrome and glass surroundings of our usual two modern Dresden hotels.

......I say information on the website, what I actually mean is what we could glean from the German only language pages and very attractive accompanying pictures.

They may well have read those very words when this review was originally published (on Ciao) - the website now presents you with a choice of German or English text - a big improvement on twelve months ago!

Being a four star hotel offered certain assurances as far as I was concerned as to the level of service and quality of the rooms, pricing was broadly similar (see below) to our usual accommodation when travelling through Germany.

One, all important, facility was advertised, a car park. Pity it had not occurred to me that, even in Germany, 110 years ago, when it first opened, not that many guests would have possessed a car to park here!

HAVE WE STAYED THERE PREVIOUSLY?

No, we had not - which, in this case, made finding it a little tricky! We had emailed the hotel prior to leaving England, requesting a map to get us from the motorway. The map published on the website simply did not tie up to our own road map. The reply to our email, containing written directions, was sent by the hotel receptionist (a lovely lady) who, by her own apology, was not very good at speaking, or writing, English. My German is non-existent, so Multimap once again came to the rescue.

Even with map and hotel directions in hand, we still managed to exit the motorway too early and struggled to find the, what turned out to be, beautiful and historic little town of Hohenstein-Ernstthal.

Once there, the Hotel Drei Schwanen was very easy to find as it forms the south eastern corner of the town square and dating from 1898 was probably the most "modern" building in sight!

BOOKING PROCESS 7 / 10

As we did not book directly with the hotel, but through travelres.com, I cannot comment accurately on the hotels own booking service.

As the hotel's website is now presented in English as well as German, booking a room here should be as easy as anywhere else - that was not the case with the all German site when we booked last year.

LOCATION 9 / 10

Once we actually found the Drie Schwanen, it turned out to be in a perfect location for our journey between Poland and England. Leave A4 (E40) autobahn at the correct junction and you spend less than five minutes driving to it from the motorway.

Indeed, leaving in the morning it was almost TOO close to the motorway, the car having had insufficient time to reach proper operating temperature, before having to use maximum acceleration in order to join the extremely fast moving traffic (125mph or 200km/hr) on this de-restricted section of road.

From a tourist's point of view, this hotel could be regarded as ideally situated, in the heart of, no it forms PART OF the heart of this lovely old town, high up on a hill side overlooking the "Saxon Ring". Immediately opposite the hotel is the seventeenth century town hall with the town climbing steeply up the hill behind it.

On the sweltering hot Saturday afternoon that we arrived in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, it felt very much like a place that time had forgotten, at 4.45pm everything, apart from an ice cream parlour on the opposite corner of the square, was shut. Only the occasional motor bike or passing car reminded you that this was indeed the twenty first century.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS 5 / 10

To be honest, although not entirely unfavourable, our first impressions did not match the website image at all. We actually looked at one another and asked 'is this the same hotel?'

Very much smaller than we had expected, on the outside at least it looked far less smart too. We parked on the road facing the front door, hotel parking only, signage showing that non-residents cars would be towed away. This, it turned out, was the car park. I had expected some form of secure parking - the town square had not been quite what I had in mind.

CHECKING IN 7 / 10

The hotel appeared to be empty - not a guest or staff member in site. The reception desk is located behind and to the right of the impressive glass and wrought iron front doors. We poked our heads through into the restaurant to find the only member of staff behind the bar there. Although her English was poor, once handed our reservation number, she handled the check-in quickly and without fuss, giving us our room key and managing to explain how to find it

ON THE WAY TO THE ROOM i.e. how easy is it to find your way around? How accessible is if for less able persons? What condition are the public rooms and passageways in? 7 / 10

The grand spiral staircase, and the beautiful chandelier hanging over it, is probably the highlight of this hotel. The corridor beyond is brightly lit, clean and well decorated. Particularly ecologically friendly here is that the main lighting and piped music only activate when the sensors detect human presence.

There is a lift here, although as usual we chose to use the stairs, the corridors are wide and level. The steps down from the "car park" are somewhat less than disabled friendly however.

THE ROOM 6 / 10

I have to make the up-front declaration that the specific climatic conditions have a probably disproportionate affect on the bulk of the review that follows, however these were our impressions "on the day" so to speak.

On this uncomfortably humid and meltingly hot - 34degC evening, ANY room with air conditioning would have been welcome. Our first floor triple room, regrettably, did a great impression of a very large oven. There was no air conditioning - and to add to the overwhelming disappointment, the mini-bar fridge did not work.

We had the "luxury" of a large window - without a view - facing the backs of adjacent buildings, as well as a window in the en-suite bathroom on the opposite side of the room. The air was oppressively heavy and stale, this extraordinarily large room felt claustrophobic due to the sheer heat - well above the 34deg. outside temperature.

Apart from the aforementioned non-operative mini-bar / fridge, the room contained a king sized double bed, a full sized single, a large desk on which sat a generously big television, a large closed wardrobe as well as an open one and shelf for case. Three tub chairs were provided around the "T" shaped desk unit. The large pieces of furniture did little to diminish the size of this very large room.

Further items detracting from the four star ambiance here included the rather strange cushions attached to the headboard, at least they should have been attached, but the starboard one hung limply on the bed, its' Velcro fastening having given up the will to fasten many moons ago.

THE EN-SUITE 8 / 10

With the rather uncomfortable exception of the toilet, this was probably the nicest hotel en-suite bathroom that we have ever used. A full sized bath was provided with a power shower mounted over it. We liked the concertina shower screen here so much that we came home and purchased a very similar item for our own bathroom! Decorated in my favourite colours, blue tiles on the walls and floor and sparkling clean white bathroom suite, this large room was light and but for the oppressive heat, would have been pleasantly airy.

Yes, the toilet! Well, at 5ft 8ins I regard my self as being of average height. So high up on the wall was the toilet pan mounted that, sitting on it, my feet were hanging in thin air - a surprisingly uncomfortable experience for someone, like me, used to keeping their feet firmly on the ground so to speak.

For the three of us, a generous provision of good quality toiletries was provided, as were lovely soft fluffy white towels.

It always surprises me to see electrical appliances supplied in bathrooms abroad. In this case, a hair dryer was attached to the wall, plugged into an electrical point right next to the hand basin.

DID WE GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP? 7 / 10

No, we did not!

But I have to be fair about this and again put that down to the weather conditions. Firstly it was far too hot to go to sleep, then at around 3.00am, a huge thunderstorm erupted, it was so hot in the room that after two hours of almost continuous thunder, and torrential rain, the temperature in our room had not reduced at all.

Three points lost here due to the omission of air conditioning, a feature that in this part of the world where such weather is not unusual is unforgivable in a four star hotel.

With the fridge not working we resorted to leaving cold water running in the hand basin over our bottles of water in order to keep them cool - the three of us making frequent visits to the bathroom during the night in a futile attempt to cool down.

Given more favourable weather, in this rear facing room at least, there is no reason why a very good night's sleep could not be enjoyed. The large double bed was extraordinarily comfortable - again one of the best in which I have (attempted!) to sleep in any hotel. The linen was immaculately clean too.

There was no noise from either outside the building, nor from within the hotel, the room door was very solid and appeared to have some form of soundproof seal around it - very thoughtful the Germans - especially appreciated by light sleepers like me!

FACILITIES ON OFFER - No score here, different grades / prices of hotel understandably have different facilities.

Air conditioning apart, this was my style of hotel. No pools, no fitness centre, in fact nothing here that we were paying for but not using. However, again, at this price I would have expected a secure parking place for the car.

I am sure that here in England the Drei Schwanen would not qualify for those four stars, all in all the facilities appeared pretty limited to me.......

BREAKFAST / OTHER MEALS, FOOD & DRINKS 10 / 10

......on the other hand if, like me, you are a "foodie" then those four stars could be regarded as being richly deserved. In the past I have eaten in Michelin Rosette restaurants and been served food of vastly inferior quality to this.

Tired after our drive through Poland during the day, and with everything else in town shut, it was "Hobson's choice", take dinner in the hotel restaurant or go without. Yes, wonder of wonders, I have discovered a town without a McDonalds!

We were offered the choice of eating al-fresco, tables and chairs on the pavement in the square, or in the very attractive dining room. It seemed sensible to sample the best of both worlds. At our request, we were handed an English language menu - which over an ice cold beer we perused outside, but even under the big umbrella it was far too hot to eat there. It was not exactly cool in the small restaurant (that again looks far bigger on the web site), but the temperature was more bearable inside and the ambiance charming - even if there were only the three of us eating there.

The menu was full of local and mouth watering sounding delicacies and specialities. For my wife and I the choice was a difficult one, there were so many tempting dishes on offer that choosing was near impossible. The problem was more with Klaudia - my thirteen year old Polish sister in law. This was not a menu suitable for children.

I am not going to describe all the food in detail, it was all superb - this is after all an hotel review, rather than a restaurant one - suffice to say here that I do not remember enjoying a meal as much as this one in a very long time. Not generally given to paying over the odds for eating out, two courses - we simply could not manage a sweet - came to the equivalent of £77 for the three of us; that without any wine or drinks. Bearing in mind the quality AND quantity, we regarded it as good value for money.

Incidentally we had been served by the same lady who checked us in, served our drinks and probably washed up our dishes afterwards!

Breakfast the following morning was a typical German buffet affair. To drink, a choice of teas onto which you pour your own boiling water (from a fancy chrome samovar) are provided, a coffee pot placed on the table and fresh oranges for you to juice in a machine - also provided. To eat, cut meats, cheeses and bowls of salad on one side of the table, on the other a choice of cereals. There was also a small heated cabinet containing the usual frankfurters and scrambled eggs. In the centre of the table are a choice of breads - always enjoyed in this area of Germany - along with various spreads to put on them and a few sweet cakes.

OVERALL VALUE FOR MONEY 6 / 10

I am concerned that the lack of air conditioning, so uncomfortably highlighted during our stay, has unduly clouded my overall assessment in terms of value for money. However, I can only compare it with similarly priced hotels in this region which are not only air conditioned but also have comprehensive leisure facilities as well as secure parking to offer too - should you want to use them. As the only hotel in town the Drei Schwanen enjoys something of a monopoly. That, thirty minutes away in Dresden, we could not find a room, and yet here, this hotel appeared empty also rather speaks of its' appeal and value.

Our triple room had cost 109 Euro, a double is 89, whilst for a single you will pay 65 Euro. Suites are available at 99 Euro. Looking at the hotel's own website, it would appear that by booking through travelres.com we actually gained no advantage over the standard rack rate.

HOW LIKELY AM I / ARE WE, TO USE THIS HOTEL AGAIN?

We would love the opportunity to sample more items from the menu there! However, we felt from the moment that we arrived, that this particular hotel - food apart - failed to live up to either the website description, or the very ambitious four star rating.

On balance, I probably would not be inclined to return to the Drei Schwanen, the installation of air conditioning would change that however. All in all, other hotels in this region have far more to offer at this price level and would be more likely to win our custom.

Hotel Drei Schwanen
Altmarkt 19
09337
Hohenstein-Ernstthal
Germany
Phone: +49 3723 6590
Fax: +49 3723 659459

RICHADA'S HOTEL RATING 72 / 100

Putting that score into perspective, here are my previously rated hotels using the same scoring system:

Innkeeper's Lodge, Chester Northeast - 83%
Innkeeper's Lodge, Stockport - 83 %
Innkeeper's Lodge, Hull - 81%

Hotel Drei Schwanen (Germany) - 72%

Hotel Piast, Boleslawiec (Poland) - 64%
Chadwick Hotel, St Annes - 63 %

Summary: A fine hotel providing the weather is cooler - four stars highly misleading.