Lebenberg Schlosshotel-Kitzbuhel in Kitzbuehel

It is truly amazing how such a beautiful hotel with such fantastic infrastructure can be so horribly mismanaged. The hotel was recommended to us by people who have been there in the past, but something has clearly gone wrong there. The staff is made up of a ragtag team of predominantly Greek people and other non-German speaking nationalities, who seem to have been specifically handpicked for their lack of experience and short fuse. The only people who seemed to know what they were doing were the bartenders and the kitchen staff who managed to produce decent food at the price of having to wait for it for hours. To be specific: At arrival things seemed quite alright apart from the fact that nobody seemed to speak German. The rooms were fine. Luggage was brought to us by a tall friendly man. From that point on things started going downhill. At dinner it took the staff 2 hours to bring our main course. The house rule for ordering drinks seemed to be that you had to ask the waiter 3 times for your drink before they brought it. This process was repeated every single day (we stayed 5 nights). Upon inquiring whether they could bring the food a little faster since we have a newborn who needs to sleep (it was already 23:00), we were ominously told by our waiter that “our time will come” – possibly because the staff also lacked English skills. After that the waiter started arguing with the woman from the restaurant reception. He told her to hold his tablet while she walked past our table, since “she could also wait a bit if all the guests had to wait for everything”. Once the bill arrived the waiter explained to us that he had given us a EUR 160 wine and not a EUR 50 wine by mistake, but since we had consumed it unknowingly, we had to pay for it. We politely declined which visibly confused him, and he proceeded with trying to tell us that they may be able to give us a discount. We declined the offer and he managed to bring the price down to the original price, after 20 minutes of pondering out loud what he should do. The cleaning lady in the morning wisely asked at what time she should clean our room out of respect for our newborn, only to scold us the next day why we were in the room 45 minutes after she should have cleaned it. My wife tried to explain that the cleaning lady was 45 minutes late, and we needed to feed the baby, but she possibly didn’t hear the explanation because she slammed the door midsentence. Before going to the SPA in the afternoon our friends ordered room service only to be told to go to the bar and pick it up themselves, since there was no one available to bring it up. The SPA, while having one of the most iconic views in Kitzbühel was clearly too small for the huge hotel, especially considering the fact, that only the outside sauna was properly working. The other saunas and the steambath were clearly not at the right temperature which for an Austrian hotel is truly sinful. The outside sauna was therefore crowded with people looking

This was our second stay in the hotel. Last year we had such a fantastic time that we decided to return this year in the same period. However our experience this time has not been nearly as good. The service has substantially degraded and the hotel felt very impersonal. The personnel in the restaurant was particularly disorganised, often unprofessional and at times even impolite. We always had long waits and bad vibes which is not something you would wish before Christmas. The shuttle service should be increased at busy times. Such a pity this beautiful hotel is now managed so poorly.