Hindsgavl Castle — Hotel in Middelfart Municipality

We stayed here once before in 2020, and in spite of Covid, found it to be a very welcoming, well run hotel with a great restaurant. The grounds are absolutely beautiful & the renovation of the old stables, where our room was located, was very well done in terms of design & function. Based on our past positive experience, we decided to return to celebrate my husband's birthday. The accommodations were still very good & our package included dinner & breakfast. However, our experience was different this time, as we felt like the hotel had become a money machine. The dinner menu was restricted to a 3 course fixed menu, which fortunately we were happy about, but there was no room for flexibility. Wine was only available by the bottle, not by the glass, another huge profit center for the hotel, but presenting limited options for guests- unless you opted for the wine pairing. This was the first indication that the management was prioritizing their bottom line, not their guests' experience. They must have accomplished their goal of not having any waste in the kitchen whatsoever. The money machine hypothesis was confirmed when we asked for a late checkout of 11:00, as the stated check out time was 10:00, which we found unusually early. (They offer an 11:00 checkout on weekends, but we were there on a weekday, so we thought this was a reasonable request.) For the first time in our lives, including travel all over the world, we were told it would cost us an additional 150 DKK (approximately $21.74) per hour for a late checkout. One can imagine how put off we were, not to mention that we were made to feel like hourly hotel "guests." This was definitely not appreciated. And the final act of pettiness: We forgot the brushes to our electric toothbrush, & when we requested 2 ordinary toothbrushes in reception, we were told it would cost 25 DKK (about $3.62 each) per brush. This was the epitome of petty. Unfortunately Hindsgavl Slot has become a money machine, & even worse, we didn't feel...

Stayed at Hindsgavl Slot for 5 nights over Christmas. Turns out, a lot of Danes stay there during the Holidays. The breakfast was good, not a spectacular amount of options to choose from, but had all the basics and the quality was good. Our main issue was the fact that everyone was in each other's way trying to get food. It was extremely uncomfortable and very stressful. My general impression was that if you're there for a conference or a group event, Hindsgavl is great. For us, it was ok, but we felt that the price was too high and that we didn't feel particularly welcome (nor did we feel unwelcome). We had paid extra for a 'view room' and the view was a path with some grass and trees, with slivers of water. In the spring and summer, I bet you won't be able to see the water. It did not feel reasonable to charge extra for this 'view'. The room itself was in the old stables and was rustic cool with exposed bricks and a tile floor. The shower stall was freestanding in the room and very small. It was virtually impossible to shower without touching the curtain which we found uncomfortable. We wish that they would have slippers in the room - that would have made a big difference, especially since the entire room had...

We had the Junior suit. Beautiful clean room (we found some hairpins in one corner though). Comfy bed and quite setting. Room 5 stars. One star less as we told them we don't want any diary in our diet during the stay, and there was normal milk at the room (at a junior suit i expect the little extra mile of removing it or even better replacing with plant milk). Also their was only decaf coffee at the room, when I called to ask for normal coffee they asked us to come to the reception to get it, again, I would expect them to bring some by. One more star less due to the lack of vegan options during breakfast. besides jam and vegan butter there was not much to put on the bread. The warm dishes ham and tomatoes were next to each other and they didnt provide one fork each to serve yourself, so the ham spoon was used for tomatoes as well. Service was a bit overwhelmed at breakfast time. All in all a nice stay, but it lacked the eye for detail and going the extra mile for our special dietary requirements whcih should not be that special anymore nowadays. The bucket of flowers we ordered...