Gobels Schlosshotel "Prinz Von Hessen"

I stayed at the „Göbel‘s Schlosshotel” for two nights in October 2021 with my parents and three sisters. We had a really good time, overall, although there is some room for improvement. We had three double rooms on the second floor of the East wing. The hotel consists of several buildings. The East wing can be reached via an overpass from the main building which houses the reception, restaurant, and spa. However, the overpass is on the third floor so that we had to go up two stories, use the overpass and go down one floor to reach our rooms. It was slightly confusing at first and nobody showed us to our rooms. We were just given general directions. The rooms were clean and well-equipped. However, the decor was rather tacky and not up to five-star standard, in our opinion. The beds were comfortable. The bathrooms were clean and spacious with a good shower and a nice range of toiletries provided. The spa is very nice. It consists of a heated outdoor pool that can be used at any time of the year, a nice indoor pool, two jacuzzis, three different saunas, a steam bath, a number of relaxation rooms, and a cafeteria. Drinks (tea, coffee, sparkling and still water, iced tea) are provided free of charge. All the ladies in our group had a massage which we all thought was good but not outstanding. We had booked half-board. Frankly, none of us thought the food was up to five-star standard. Breakfast was buffet style and consisted of the usual choices that one gets at any big hotel, nothing out of the ordinary. Dinner was buffet style the first night and à la carte the second. The starters on the first day were good. However, none of the meat options for main course appealed to me (nor my sisters), so I had the fish. It was OK, but nothing to write home about. The desserts were good. The starters on the second day were good as well, but the rest of the four-course meal really wasn’t. The pumpkin soup was rather bland and contained strange morsels of meat, the main course was just ordinary chicken with pasta and asparagus and the dessert consisted of different kinds of ice creams and mousses none of which were very tasty. One of them was basil ice cream for example. It just tasted like cold basil. The drinks were rather overpriced, I thought. All of the staff were very polite and friendly. All the servers in the restaurant were very attentive. Some of the people at reception were a bit confused, though, particularly concerning who had booked which massage (it wasn’t complicated – four of us had booked the same one) and which massages had or hadn’t already been paid for. To sum it up: we thought this was a good hotel. If it had been four-star and priced accordingly, I would have given it five points. As it was, it fell a bit short of our expectations.