Familienresort Buchau Maurach am Achensee — Hotel in Eben am Achensee

The hotel I would say caters mainly to Austrian/German speaking guests, you do not feel very comfortable there and many staff especially at the reception and kids club speak little English. This also creates a very "Austrian" atmosphere. The room we had was very dark and very different from the one advertised (see photo). in the middle of the day with all lights on it felt like you were in a cave. We asked to change the room several times but were told the hotel is fully booked. If the room overlooks the playground (which most of them do) there will be kids running around and screaming up until 22.00-22.30 so if you want to sit quietly on a terrace or open a window you can forget about it (but ok it's a kids friendly hotel). The biggest disappointment for us however was the kids club and management experience:

The kids club can be run by up to 8 animators at time (sometimes 3-4 here and others somewhere else). They seem to be convinced that the Austrian military discipline should apply to the kids (their guests) as the children are forced to clean up even after short periods of play "to avoid making a mess".

As we dropped off 2 of our kids for 1 hour on day 1 the animators didn't engage with them or offer any activity, so naturally the kids were left on their own. I saw the animators sitting idly and looking at their phones in complete boredom. Our kids set up a nice playing area with some of the toys they picked, when we came back to pick them up for lunch after only 1 hour the 4! animators asked the to clean up the very few toys the had taken out (not to leave a mess!) , which we found strange as there were no other kids at the club and everything was perfectly clean.

Let me be clear, we've never stayed at a hotel before where kids (i.e. hotel guests) would be forced to the job of paid animators. Our kids are not spoilt, they are well organized and always help and clean up their stuff, and would have helped on this occasion too, if at least someone had played with them for some time or if there was only 1 person and many kids around we would have asked and helped ourselves.

However in the middle of the day with 4 animators doing NOTHNG asking the kids to do their job was a bit weird.

the next day we decided to try the kids club again - left them for an hour and went for a walk. Our eldest daughter (she has a phone in case of emergencies) called us 30 mins later saying the animators were asking her to clean up!

We had to go back to the club and this time confront the whole kids club team (there were at least 6-7 ladies all doing nothing, standing, sitting, looking at their phones and 3 kids playing on their own (including 2 of ours).The women continued to harass them to clean up (there was not mess whatsoever) which made us very upset. Any common sense or explanation on our part didn't work. They kept repeating the same thing over and over again: kids clean up, etc etc. .. I believe with that kind of setting the club needs on 1 animator (instead of 6-8) and then the kids could clean up every 30 mins.

we felt harassed, stressed and very unwelcome, our kids didn't want to come back and could not understand why so many employees of the club were constantly harassing them (including the club manager).

I brought this to the attention of the reception and asked to meet with the manager. nothing happened on that day and nobody reached out. I asked again and again on the next day - nothing. Finally I remind them that we can't use the kids club and feel uncomfortable there and left them my mobile number so the hotel manager could contact me when available - nothing!

I was not contacted nor asked about it on checkout. closer to our last day I found out that the hotel manager is a 70+ owner and his wife, and I guess that's what it is as they really don't care about non-Austrian customers and the obsessed, lazy animators that are wasting their money and time at the kids club.

*disclaimer: (I do not write either positive or negative reviews using my real name for...

We stayed for 4 nights at this hotel. Our kids loved it, but from a ‘grown up’ perspective we have stayed at better family hotels in Austria (considering what we had paid).

The good: Amazing facilities the rooms were very clean when we arrived the dinner was delicious we loved the climbing facilities because the hotel is so big, it never felt crowded even so it was very busy the location on the lake is great some of the kids entertainment was great like the t shirt making and the night hike with torches great water slide

The not so good: the hotel is very big and the ‘heart’ is missing. 2 of the receptionists were lovely. The others were professional, but not very smiley nor were going out of their way to help. We usually love the Austrian friendliness. The same about the guys on the bar. I never saw the smiling and they don’t seem to like kids very much. considering we paid EUR 670 a night we had hoped our room would be cleaned daily. One day it didn’t get cleaned at all and the next day it only got cleaned after a lot of complaining and hunting down the cleaners the dinner was very good, but we had better breakfast and lunch at hotels where we had paid less. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of choice, but it was the same every day and nothing special or surprising. there are no English signs on any of the dishes. We don’t eat every meat and every day I had to hunt an employee down to understand which meat it is. Also for the snack they only had pork or vegetarian dishes. Smiley is supposed to come every day at breakfast to interact with the kids. We had experienced this at other hotels and it’s usually lovely. Despite being every day at 8:30am at breakfast just to see Smiley we didn’t meet him a single time. they claim to have childcare not only for smaller kids, but also for 7 years plus. Technically this is true, but it’s in the same room as the 0 to 6 year olds and with the same toys. Our 8 year old was horrified and even our 5 year old didn’t want to go back since it was to ‘babyish’. There were some other activities for our older one, but we carefully had to plan around them.

All in all, we had a great time, but at this cost there are better...

We went there in mid of March from Friday to Sunday, just two nights stay. Location: Nice place close to Achensee and roads, easy to reach from Munich, very silent and relaxing. Rooms: We stayed in Garten Suite III. Size is perfect for families, it very clean, tidy and well planned. It has a nice mountain view and small balcony with a garden view. Our room is well localized so we can reach the pool area, restaurant, playgrounds easily. Person/Staff: They are very kind, friendly and eager to support/help you to enjoy. Restaurant: They give us a fixed nice table. Breakfast were good, evening dinners are perfect. Lunch menu is weak. They use very quality products, fruits. Kids will enjoy what they eat. Lots of drinking alternatives for all. Their mountain water is amazing tasty. Better to increase some breakfast options in bakery and hot dishes. Pools: Outdoor and indoor pools are good and moderate dimension. It was not crowded, both suitable for kids and elterns. I really liked the outside pool. SPA/Wellness/Massage: They have normal SPA area with few options. My Wife had massage and she really feel relaxation. Thanks to Christina (I hope I wrote the name is correct). Activities: This is the main problem that we have faced. It looks like there are so many alternative activities that you can do but mostly you cannot do most of them. It might be all booked, or overpriced or not available time slot for weekend visitors. You may not know this before you enter the hotel. There is a table at your room which you can use for arrangements. It looks fancy and user friendly but at some point you loose yourself among menus and loose most of your time while you are looking. I did not find it very useful. At the end we find ourselves looking after our kids since we could not register them any of the activities.

As a result, it was a nice enjoyable experience for us. I would like to give 5 star but due to the lack of available time slot for kid activities I cut one star. I can clearly say performance/price ratio is low for me. It was really expensive what...