"My second visit to the Karel. This time I stayed in the old wing, rather than in the newer rooms. Yes it’s more expensive but it’s money well spent. Only in the main building will you feel the real majesty of the place. The room was large and airy with a wonderful bed. The Brasserie served excellent food (I’d recommend the a la carte rather than the set menus) and on a hot weekend sitting outside with a drink in the property was rather nice. We skipped on the breakfasts, E35 each a night seemed a step too far but I’d suggest the money you spend on the Karel, at least with a weekend stay is worth it.
Service was generally good, although there a couple of beautiful and cool male servers who seemed to believe that I was neither cool or beautiful, but then that’s age my friend.
There are service issues though. There were weddings at the hotel which (presumably the wedding planners had ensured) resulted in a lot of people resources being focused on tasks for those. So when you arrive there’s no suggestion of help with your luggage while you see staff carefully carrying teddy bear presents off to rooms connected to the wedding. Then there was an issue in our room that on one of the hottest days in May ever our in room mini bar wasn’t working. We called for someone to look at it and were told we would need to wait as everyone was busy (more teddy bears?) and eventually when someone arrived they agreed it was dead but that there was nothing that could be done. They would look to see to moving us to another room. They would come back to us. They never did. The next morning we followed up with reception. They made notes and said that someone would look at the problem and get in touch with us. Nothing happened. On check out I mentioned the issue again, in the hope they might fix it before the next guest arrived. Notes were taken, and I was asked if I had reported the issue. Yes I had and some simple solution, like putting an ice bucket in the room might have been a partial solution, but then everyone is so busy.
I also got a message from a company reporting a data leak of my information. It was clearly related to a hotel booking, although the hotel wasn’t mentioned and some investigation on the internet traced it to the system the Karel uses for bookings. I asked about this, wanting confirmation that the leak related to my booking with them. Yes, although there was a long round about conversation about how it wasn’t the hotel, or the hotel’s fault. I disagree, if I book with you directly and you’ve chosen a system that isn’t secure that is your issue. The amount of data leaks coming from travel related companies is getting noticeable. Just shrugging it away isn’t the solution.
In the end it’s a lovely hotel and some of the problems may relate to it being a weekend stay when functions take over hotels. But when you are paying E300 a night for a room without breakfast paying attention to all of your customers needs might be worth thinking about. Perhaps if I had order fifteen teddy bears for our in room fridge the issue might have been resolved?"
