I usually find myself writing reviews for places that I have loved or at least liked, but tonight I find myself writing this review offline in a hot, stuffy, miserable room in the Central Hotel in Brig, Switzerland, hoping to prevent someone else from making the mistake of staying here.

There are two buildings to the Central hotel, the main building and the newer looking “Gasthouse”. We were in the latter, and the rooms are passable, the decoration is dowdy, but clean enough, and the bathrooms are comfortably sized. However the rooms are too hot and not possible to cool them down – the fan system barely moves any air, and with windows opening to the street, it’s becomes a trade off between breeze vs. noise and bugs. Also, while they state they have free wireless internet, it does not reach this building… just compounding my grumpiness.

The issue is that the staff just does not seem to care as we found at breakfast (which was included in the price of the stay). It seems that the Central caters to tour groups. We arrived for breakfast just as a tour group was leaving. We sat down and waited for a bit to see if the staff would restock the devastated breakfast bar, but they did not. Nobody offered us coffee, so I served our family from the pot on the burner, which prompted the server to bring us a carafe and take the coffee pot back. We asked if they were going to put out anything more, but they said that there was still food out. In short, take it or leave it.

Contrary behavior was not limited to the breakfast room. Our adult children are traveling with us and are staying in a separate room; they had left their towels hanging in the bathroom (signifying that they would use them again to save water, per the hotel’s own message). They also left the card on the door requesting privacy since they left out some of their personal effects. When we returned late from our day trip to Zermatt, they found that the room had been made up, and the towels removed – with fresh towels for only one left in their place. Too late and too tired to go in search of more towels, the kids are just making do with what they have.

The Central Hotel does not merit it’s three stars, and it is not a good value for the money. We have been traveling in Western and Central Europe for the past three weeks and this hotel qualifies as the worst place we stayed during this vacation… and probably the worst hotel we have stayed in over the last fifteen years (and that’s a lot of hotels.) Unfortunately we did not have the chance to consult Trip Advisor before choosing this hotel - we arrived late into Brig and the Tourism Office made a call on our behalf to assure us a room. Per our plan, we were supposed to go to Sion, but got held up in traffic getting across Switzerland.

While Brig is not worth the detour, it served it’s purpose in putting us within an easy drive of Zermatt. And Zermatt is definitely worth the detour – and worth staying in! Just wish we had gotten the chance to do so...