When you are paying 5 star prices you expect 5 star service and this wasn't the case at the Dollenberg.

As a party of 4 adults we opted for a Suite 'Type 3' which although priced much higher than the cost of taking two separate rooms it seemed ideal for our purposes - having 2 double bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms plus an extra cloakroom and a separate living room.

I was careful to contact the Hotel first to make sure that the design of the Suite was suitable for us, and as we require both bedrooms to have 'separated' mattresses (not double beds) I was also assured that all the beds in their Hotel have separated mattresses.

Upon arrival we were shown to our Suite (515) however we were dismayed to find that the layout was completely different to the information I had been given.

The 2nd bedroom was small and for adults sharing it was only suitable for single use because it only had one standard sized bed (one mattress). The 2nd bathroom was only a tiny shower room. There was no separate cloakroom. The living area was very small and the most annoying aspect was that there was extremely limited storage in the entire suite - there were no wardrobes in the bedrooms and nowhere at all to put your suitcases - the only place to put them was on the floor in the hall way which meant you had to step over them when entering before you could reach the bedrooms or living area. This was not 5 star experience.

Another silly aspect of the design was glass doors leading into the bathroom from the 1st bedroom, meaning zero privacy as the lock in the bedroom didn't even work.

It was entirely unsuitable accommodation for us as it couldn't sleep 4 adults - their solution to the problem was that the 4th person would sleep in the living room on the sofa but if we wanted to sleep on a sofa we would have booked that and certainly not at the price tag that they were charging for this suite!

We asked to change to 2 separate rooms instead but were told firstly that the Hotel was completely full that night (which it wasnt), then that we 'might' be able to move the next day but we would have to wait until the next morning before they could tell us.

At that point we decided to leave as we couldn't have stayed in that Suite - yet as soon as we said that we were leaving everything changed! A manager was brought over to us to try to help and she immediately started trying to find other rooms for us, 30 minutes later we were told that we could in fact change to 2 other rooms the next day and they also reduced the price for our Suite to the cost that it would have been it we had booked these 2 rooms originally.

They actually took us to show us one of the rooms that they would be giving us and, although it was going to be vacant that night (it was 6:30pm by this time), we still couldn't have it until the next day!! I still don't understand the reason for that, afterall it wasn't like we wanted it free of charge, we would have still been paying the full price for the room for that night!

However, on the plus side - our #1 priority when choosing the Hotel Dollenberg originally was the reputation for it's food - we were not at all disappointed on that count and would highly recommend the restaurant here to everyone !

We had intended to dine in their gastronomic restaurant 'Le Pavillion', but after our problems at check-in none of our party were in the frame of mind to spend that kind of money so we opted for their half board restaurant 'Kaminstube' instead - what a great move that was! In fact it was so good that we actually cancelled our other reservations for Le Pavillion for the remaining nights of our stay so we could eat in the Kaminstube each night!

On the standard menu you could choose from A La carte, or there are various set price menus of 3, 4 or 5 courses (average 42 EUR for 4 courses). There's also a special 5 course menu (Weekends 42.50 EUR, 'Midweek 18.50 EUR) which looked delicious, but the biggest revelation was the superb 6 course half board menu!

This is only available to Hotel residents and being priced at only 17 EUR we didn't think it was going to be anything special but how wrong we were, it was gastronomic heaven! With food of this quality you really have to have a good reason to deviate onto the a la carte.

Even taking into account our check-in problems at the Hotel Dollenberg we woud consider going back to this hotel again if we needed to stay in that area - however with the benefit of hindsight we will be careful to book two separate rooms in future knowing the unsuitability of the suites!