My husband and I have sadly just returned from a wonderful week at The Royal Park Hotel. This was our fourth visit following two weeks spent there for our honeymoon in 2004. We returned to ski and to celebrate our anniversary . We were amazed to find that The Rickli family not only remembered us but also remembered that it was our wedding anniversary. They very kindly let us have the suite that we had for our honemoon and on arrival in the restaurant on the first night we were greeted with roses and champagne. The Rickli Family are very kind, warm and quietly generous, and we thank them for making our anniverary very special.

The hotel is a haven of tranquil peace in a chaotic world and nothing is too much trouble for the staff. The food on this visit was the best so far and the service is to be enjoyed, it is impeccable and a lovely experience. It was always a joy to pass a few moments with Mr Rickli during dinner as he greets his guests each night.

Our room was beautifully decorated and remained spotless at all times due to the care and attention of the room attendants.

We went to Kandersteg to ski, its a lovely quiet village, the skiing is fairly gentle and there are rarely queues at the lifts. The new gondola is great, the old chair lift was lovely but the new one is an improvement in snowy conditions! The apres ski is quiet but there is always a friendly reception wherever you chose to quench your thirst.

My advise is - escape the rat race and treat yourself to a visit to The Royal Park.

I've stayed in Kandersteg several times and thought I'd treat myself to a luxury stay at the Royal Park. What a disappointment. The hotel thinks very highly of itself but its opinion is misguided. It's old fashioned in a bad way - there's a class system in the dining room so the lowly waiters can only bring water to your table for a senior waiter to pour into your glass and service is painfully slow. Staff are friendly but intimidated by the owners and while they keep telling you nothing's too much trouble, in practice everything's too much trouble. There's a spa and treatment rooms which remained closed throughout my one week stay. Allegedly you can make appointments with a "local" therapist who will come to the hotel at her convenience - not yours. The menu says vegetarian options available but clearly the chefs and the restaurant staff haven't read the menu as their "mushroom crepes" were scrambled eggs and the vegetarian risotto was a plate of rice. Desert buffet's good though.To cap it all, the elderly owner insists on touring the dining room to chat to the guests every evening. He didn't stay long at my table. I booked a suite (with a fabulous mountain view) which was spacious but overheated and had a shared open balcony so the people next door could see straight into my room and my bathroom unless I closed the curtains. I complained about the food on my last night and was ostracised at breakfast next morning for my trouble. Don't go if you are under 70 or vegetarian (and if you're over 70 and veggie, eat out - there are several better places than the RP dining room).

We stayed at the Royal Park for 6 nights on a half board basis and booked a Junior Suite overlooking the garden. We had a wonderful stay and found the staff to be outstanding. Having read mixed reviews on the trip advisor web site we booked with some minor trepidation but found the negative comments to be totally incorrect. We took the advice of some reviewers and requested a quiet room overlooking the garden. The one comment I would agree with is the length of the beds, ours being from an era when people were obviously a lot shorter; this was not a problem for us as we are both 5ft 7ins or less but if you are say 5ft 9ins or taller, then our beds would not have been long enough. My advice would be to check with the hotel before booking and request beds without the ''antique'' ends, there definitely are some. Our room was spacious and lovely, very clean, with a balcony and glorious views to the surrounding mountains. We found the half board deal to be extremely good value for money and found the quality of food and service to be outstanding. Dinner consisted of salad starter choices (sounds boring but definitely not), followed by a soup (with choices and delicious), followed by hor's douvres or a fish course (your choice to heap as much smoked salmon on your plate as your conscience will allow!!), followed by a main course (example choices being red snapper, beef stroganov, medallions of lamb, etc etc and all absolutely delicious), followed by a huge array of exquisite desserts (and as many visits to the dessert table as your stomach will allow), followed by coffee etc in one of the comfortable lounges. We drank Swiss wine every night which we found to be extremely good value for money, taking the advice of the head waiter (who never pointed us to the most expensive wine). You are definitely not treated as a statistic in this hotel. In fact the owner's father (in his 70's) loved to make all of the guests feel even more welcome (if that was possible) and we were impressed that rather than simply enjoy retirement, he turned out 'suited and booted' from morning until evening, offering any advice required and ensuring standards remain exceptionally high. We used the hotel indoor pool, steam and sauna every day and usually had the pool to ourselves, and always had the steam and sauna to ourselves. We were on a ski / hiking trip and the hotel staff would even have returned our skis to the shop if we'd allowed them! We were picked up from the train platform in the hotel limo and delivered back to the train station by the 'owner senior' himself, with our bags being carried right to the platform by the porter. We cannot fault this hotel and would definitely return again, especially for summer walking, Kandersteg being surrounded by wonderful mountains.

Having stayed over 9 times in six years at the Royal Park Hotel it feels like my own home. One of the last truly independent owned and operated 5 star deluxe hotels anywhere in the World, the Rickli family are excellent hosts and can arrange anything a guest would require. Traditional Swiss service and quality are the order of the day if you like busy modern, funky minimalistic hotels then stay away.
Standard rooms overlook the main street in the village and the local school is opposite so you can get noise from the Children playing also the station so its well worth paying for a garden view room if you want complete quiet, however its nice to feel part of Swiss Village life instead of some mass tourism resort with no local people.
The food is exeptional the "standard" half board dinner consists of 5 courses with great choice and if you have any special diet request the chef can prepare anything with 24 hours notice, all meals are prepared fresh no quick meals here. The puddings are fantastic usually i end up choosing at least five every evening!
All in all excellent value for such a high class hotel, truly first class service and taste assured.