You can imagine that the early parts of the last century were the real glory days of the Grand Hotel. The patrons would arrive in their droves, by various means including lake steamers, and their holiday would include taking tea on the terrace, walking the grounds, and then dressing for dinner. Such a Grand Hotel would have been the Seehotel Hirschen in Gunten, but unfortunately for such places, times have moved on.
Gunten is a small village on the edge of Lake Thun, on the road from Thun to Interlaken - and that really is it! If you want to do anything or go anywhere, you need transport, and in our case that meant getting into the car because the lake steamers stopped running the previous weekend, and indeed the hotel itself closes for the winter at the end of October.
The hotel is rated as 4-star, but cannot in reality be classed as such. The public rooms are most impressive, with chandeliers and polished wood floors, and panoramic windows overlooking the lake. There is a French and a Swiss restaurant, as well as a separate breakfast room which is used as a dining room for those on half-board packages. We tried the Swiss restaurant one evening and were pleased to see we were the only visitors, all the other patrons seemingly local. Breakfast is of the cold buffet variety, and was ample rather than generous.
However where it starts to go off is when you go to the bedrooms - via a rickety 3-sided lift. Our 'superior' room on the second floor was of a reasonable size, but the bathroom was minute. The publicity says the hotel was 'recently refurbished', but they can't have got as far as the second floor. The furniture was from the 80's - gold-colour tubular metal with deep pink bathroom suite - and the carpet looked as though it hailed from the sams era. But the biggest problems were ventilation and noise. The room opened onto a large balcony via french doors, and the views across the lake were superb. But the hotel has no aircon, and those french doors were the only means of letting air - and flying insects- into the room. The noise did not come from the road, as other reporters have found, but from the adjoining rooms - we could hear EVERYTHING, except for when the creaking floors from the people upstairs drowned it out!
The Seehotel Hirschen seems to have found its niche in the half-board package-tour trade, and for that it probably provides good value. But a 4-star hotel it isn't, and Best Western are kidding themselves if they think it is.
- Best Western Gunten
- Gunten Best Western
