Sunstar Hotel Grindelwald — Hotel in Grindelwald

I am sorry to write this review, but I was a little disappointed with my experience at Sunstar. I rented 2 rooms, one of them was a junior suite. Unfortunately, the junior suites are located in the wing they have NOT remodeled. The space of the room was nice and plentiful, but it felt like I had walked into a condo from 1970 with orange carpeting and wooden built-ins. It was very stark, like an old fashioned motel room, which I was not prepared for! A lot about this room was just annoying. We spent 3 nights at the hotel and it grew on me, but I would not stay there again for $600++/night.||Coffee Maker/Refrigerator: Lovely! Coffee was so good and it was nice having a stocked self-serve fridge with some cold drinks in it, such a nice touch. Thank you.|| Closets: Our room had closets with a rolling door that was so loud and annoying to heft back and forth anytime we were getting dressed. There were no drawers in my room for me to fold and place my items and that was very annoying. There was a bookcase in the bedroom, but the shelves were not deep so wasn't easy to store my things on this bookcase. The nightstands were very diminutive and again, not very useful. ||AC: Nope. As several reviews inform you, there is no AC in this hotel and in August it is HOT, you will miss it! Luckily, they place a fan in the room and that really helped. We could also open our windows but then you have the early morning light waking you up, so that did not contribute to a good night's sleep.||Beds: They were ok, not great. The linens are cheap and that made me sad. ||Bathroom: No bueno. Cheap, travel-lodge towels, dangerous height of a tub to step over/into for a shower. Unremarkable toiletries, stark white tiles. Really ugly aesthetically, and it felt very Travel Lodge circa 1980s in the bathroom. I did love their blow-dryer though! ||Views: Gorgeous! The views were simply amazing. We had a very large balcony that we shared with 3 other rooms. That was a little awkward as we all needed to have our windows and doors open in the August heat which allowed no privacy because we were all sharing the same space, so that was just disappointing. ||Lobby: AMAZING! However, the guests were often very poorly mannered and several times I walked by guests with their bare feet up on the furniture or even lying down taking naps on the couches of the public area lobbies. Bizarre. So many children running amok and it was just not nice. There is a play room with toys for children and walking by it, I was shocked to see it! There were toys strewn across the whole entire room, as if a child had emptied every bucket and shelf of toys and thrown them around the room. Not sure why this hotel attracts such careless parents, it was very concerning. I think the hotel needs to ask a little more of their guests in the common area. I should have said something to management, but I didn't. But the absolute disregard shown by the adults and children could have been politely corrected to elevate the experience for all the guests. Nobody wants to walk across a great lobby with sleeping bodies on the couches and people placing their bare feet on the chair across from them. sheesh.||Breakfast: Incredible! This was done very well. No complaints here, at all! Great staff, great selection of food and high quality all the way. We tried to eat outside one morning, but the bees found us and it was just too distracting trying to eat while 10 bees are dive bombing the table! Haha, so we made our way back inside.||Hotel Grounds: We were busy hiking so much we did not take advantage of the hotel property. The few times I tried, I was just turned off by so many people lounging about without any class as to how to behave in a nice hotel so I just retreated back to my Travel Lodge 1970s room. Did not use the spa or pool as the screaming children made me rethink why I would want to go to the pool. I love the sound of kids playing and having fun, but this was different, this was children acting like the pool was theirs, not a public space. ||Employees: Amazing. Everyone we interacted with was professional and hospitable. They looked tired but kept a professional air about them at all times. I appreciated that!||All in all, I would not recommend this hotel if you are looking for a more boutique hotel experience. This is a chain hotel and it felt like Disneyworld on a mid-tier cruise ship. I did not like it. The location is great and while I would stay in Grindelwald again, I would absolutely not stay here. The other side of the hotel was updated and very pretty, but it was the thoughtless clientele that really were the issue for me in addition to the outdated junior suite experience. At $600/night, I was expecting a little more...

This is a hard review to write because I really wanted to leave a better review. I can’t tell if the hotel is just understaffed, or if they over commit. We stayed in one of the suites and while the views were amazing, the room is in desperate need of a remodel. The carpet is orange and very faded. The beds are thin and old. Everything in the room seemed at least 20 years old and it was worn out and tired. The refreshing of the drinks in the fridge is nice but not in proportion with the amount of occupants in the room. We had 4 people and one still and one sparking water along with one Coke isn’t even enough for all of us. Seeing as how the other option was beer, and I don’t drink nor do my kids, it was a disappointment. ||The positives: the spa area is lovely. Just a warning though to fellow Americans, the steam rooms and sauna are no bathing suits. You can wear a towel in but just be aware everyone else is in their birthday suits. Nothing wrong with this, just a bit surprising. All of this is included in the room rate. Breakfast was also delicious. Lots of choices and an egg station. The ladies setting the tables are a bit short with you, especially if you sit at a table set for more than you, regardless if more in your party are coming down. ||The negatives: this next part is where my confusion in understaffed (which it did not seem like they were) or overcommitted comes in. We ate at the restaurant on night and it was a 2 hour meal. It should have been more like 1 hr. They were full but they also kept saying the kitchen was too busy. It’s kind of like, well, yeah, if you are to capacity that happens. But it seems like the amount they seat vastly out numbers the kitchen capacity. This also spills over to the bar area. They offer food supposedly till 9. When I tried to order at 8:30 (a salad) the guy made a face and I was like, what. He said it was late and I honestly thought I read the time wrong. But I confirmed it said 9pm (21:00) and he gave the reasoning of the restaurant is full and they make the food. Well then don’t offer food if it is an issue! Offer ready made stuff that can be grabbed right there. Again, then over extending themselves to seem like they have all these options, but they don’t. ||I already addressed the tiredness of the room. For the cost of it, almost $1,000 a night, I would expect much nicer. We stayed in a 5 star hotel in Rome this trip as well and it would put the Sunstar to shame. Cost pretty much the same for far superior service/rooms. ||We loved Grindelwald but I think we would stay somewhere...

A fun trip with some mild annoyances

The breakfast was really good, and the staff was really welcoming. The coffee was made by an automated coffee machine which had regular milk, but due to my intolerance I asked the staff if it is possible to obtain a coffee with lactose free milked and they went immediately to the kitchen to make me one, which was really nice. The dinner was also really good, with a great selection of wines and food. This part was also really nice because they had offers that were lactose free and made my meal amazing! They also had a lounge which had some AMAZING cocktails.

Although the overall stay was really nice, there were some mild annoyances (mild as in others should be aware of them). The "spa" area is not that impressive, it is basically a small pool that looks slightly old, and to be fair, it's a total maze to get to it (I had to ask for instructions like 3 times while going there). We were also with a lot of beginners in the group and wanted to go to First which was really close and had a lot of blue slopes, but it ended up being quite lame and with the slopes being much smaller than they appeared on the map, and additionally the difficulties were random (some blues had some really really steep areas - the blue slope from the top of the firstbahn starts very steep, and some reds were really easy and should've been blues). So we ended up going to the main area with Wengen anyway, which was a thousand times better. But luckily there was a bus station in front of the hotel. We also went there for two days and right when we arrived (~9AM on the first day) we wanted to make a reservation to the restaurants as we knew they had two, and sadly they told us the a la carte one is already fully booked, so we can only go to the one that had a predefined menu. Although the one with the predefined menu was really good, it was a bit annoying to find out even though you are trying to make a reservation first thing when you arrived you still can't because it's full already? How else was I gonna book it? What was also a bit annoying was the whole ski room process: we didn't receive a card to open up the ski room as our rooms weren't ready, and we also had to give it back before leaving, early in the morning, so we had a lot of interactions and waiting for the staff to come open the ski room for us on the first and last days before/after we checked in/out, which was...