Lebenberg Schlosshotel-Kitzbuhel

This is a great hotel, one that feels genuinely five star. Staff are plentiful, well-dressed, friendly, very polite, and helpful. Their spoken English is very good, including one woman who spoke English so well that I initially thought she was a native English speaker. Hotel cleanliness is excellent everywhere. My room was faultless. You might get the impression that the hotel is a long way from the centre of Kitzbuhel. It is away from the centre, but not a long way. The centre of Kitz is a pleasant 15-minute walk along quiet roads and footpaths, and during the day the hotel provides a free, reliable shuttle every 30 minutes to and from the main ski lift station. Furthermore, because the hotel isn’t in the town, it has a great view of the town, especially from the pool and sauna area on the top floor. However, if you don’t want to walk into town every evening for dinner, the hotel offers evening meals. Booking half-board – as I did - is a good option to consider. My dinners were excellent and well served. Something I particularly liked about the hotel restaurant was that tables were more spaced out than one often finds in even the best restaurants; I was able to draw back my chair to stand up without having to check if someone was seated immediately behind me. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s small things like that which demonstrate genuine quality. If you do stay half board, I recommend you pack some smart clothes if you can. I wish I could have packed better clothes for dinner, but my airline luggage allowance was too measly to permit it, so I was embarrassed to have to dine in t-shirts and jeans. The hotel does an excellent breakfast buffet. It has a large, stylish bar area. It has a good ski boot room with individual lockers. The hotel sells ski passes at reception, the cost of which the hotel adds to your bill. This makes it easy to be flexible in the face of variable ski weather, perhaps deciding after breakfast each day whether you want to ski or not, buying one-day passes instead of a multi-day pass covering your whole stay. On a rainy day, you could take a day off skiing to explore the town (although buying six, one-day passes will be more expensive than one, six-day pass).

Avoid. The hotel has great facilities: a restaurant with amazing food ( from what we heard), a pool with spectacular views, a spa, saunas, a stunning bar, even a ski rental shop. Its problem lies 100% with the management, who are either incapable of running the hotel, have no idea about hospitality, or are just cost cutting. Or maybe all three at the same time! Upon arrival they gladly(!) informed us that their restaurant is very popular so there is no chance for us to have food there on any day of our week-long stay. Thankfully the town has tons of great restaurants and the weather was good - but did they expect us to resort to pot noodles (or cannibalism maybe lol) if that was not the case? The ski rental shop also gladly informed us that they have no skis for us and that we should go to their downtown shop. Some of the staff did their best to help and made our stay much better. Funnily the higher the seniority of the employee, typically the less empathy and desire for hospitality! Well - maybe they will improve, but they won’t see us again.

The spa was incredible - amazing pool and treatments. And the man in charge is the best!! The breakfast was ideal. The rooms need updating - beds and floors don’t match the quality of the hotel. We also could not get a dinner spot because of space which was disappointing.

Having stayed in this place for years and different ownerships, we chose to stay there again. However the experience this time led us to not visit again going forward. Some examples: - starting with the check in letter - no personal greeting, but some advice what is expected - i.e. dinner only at 2 designated time slots, 2 EUR for lost or additional key cards, some dressing up requirements at breakfast and dinner, that in the end nobody obeyed, -they had a group of people in the hotel (about 20 all male) that were drunk every day and molested many other residents. Management did not take any actions to expell them, although raised to management for several times. - Hotel personnel is friendly, but restaurant area is totally understaffed, you wait forever for dinner or served meals. - rooms are old and need to be redone completely and not standard any more for the price charged. - they charge 3 EUR for tap water in the restaurant, have not seen similar in similar places. - all amenities that used to be there and made stays pleasant, like live piano, fruit baskets, activities were extinct.

My wife and I checked in today at 3 PM and went to the restaurant at 7 PM and wanted to have dinner. We were told all tables were full and seeing we did not have a reservation it was not possible. I informed the hostess that we were hotel guests and when paying EUR 500+ a night we expected them to find a solution. The answer was still no. I asked if we could wait until 9 PM but all was still full I was informed. Since I had not booked a half board stay I could not expect there to be a table. I asked if we could have something to eat in the bar instead. Again not possible, we could have a drink but no food. I went to the reception and asked if this could really be true and if they expected me to order room service instead. I was informed room service closed before 6 PM and in reality the hotel could not offer their paying guest any food. I told the staff that I have never experienced such poor service. I was informed that the service I expected was 5 star and this was only a 4.5 star hotel. The most insane argument I have ever heard. The prices are for sure 5 star but the service 1 star. The youngest member of the staff in the reception this evening agreed with us that it should at least be possible to have some food at the bar. Someone should promote this bright young man to hotel manager.

BEWARE: This hotel is incredibly understaffed during peak seasons, especially at the restaurant. Although the amenities, the spa and the rooms are excellent, the food service is incredibly poor. Breakfast and dinner are pre-paid (especially dinner is pre-fixe during the New years week). Eventhough the food is truly impressive, these pre-fixe times require you to adhere to specific seating times. You have to wait in line to get a table, then wait for your menus, food etc etc. By the time you eat, you have already fought with your spouse (bc you’re hangry) while you were searching for your severely overworked (and kind) waiter, feeling like a horrible human for asking them for the check as they are literally running through the retaurant to help all the guests. It feels more like a cruise ship than an elegent premium hotel.

The experience we have had in this hotel is horrific. The service is horrible. 30 minutes at the bar to get a drink. They then state that they run out of old fashions at the hotel. When I asked where was the best place for me to order a cappuccino after coming back from skiing I get laughed at by one of the employees at the bar, saying that’s going to be difficult. My children witnessed a verbal fight among employees at the bar. New Year’s Eve was a total disaster. We had seating for dinner at 8:30pm and got seated at 9:30pm. I understand it is a busy night, but where is the customer service communicating they are running late? Does anyone smile? When I got up to get a carafe of water because we had been sitting for 30 minutes, and hadn’t been served even water, I get scolded by a waiter for getting a carafe that was available from the bar. On a positive note, Kudos and congratulations to the chef and music on New Year’s Eve. The food was delicious and very well presented and the variety of music was great. I would not recommend this place to anyone. For the amount of money paid and the reviews from the past, what a shame. Something must have changed recently…management, directors, owners??

The hotel is great, we had a great time. Rooms are cozy and the balcony was a plus. The view is something we loved, the snowy mountains you wake up to are spectacular. We really appreciated the shuttles to the ski lifts and the drivers were impeccably professional and polite. The staff at the front desk are very polite and kind, they always had the answers for our questions and helped us throughout our stay. Our only complain was at the restaurant, specifically for dinner time - staff is overwhelmed and don’t know what to do, and they do not communicate with each other whatsoever; our food took over an hour to get to our table, it really ruined the mood. Also surprising: their English is not good. One more thing, (I know there’s people who care about this too), the water pressure in the shower is low. Overall we enjoyed our stay.