Chateau L Hospitalet Wine Resort and Spa

Lovely hotel: the grounds are well maintained, lots of flowers, great pool , the better rooms have a separate swimming pool with a sea view. Dining in Art de Vivre restaurant is a wonderful experience for food lovers. Excellent wine and a free wine tasting for guests. A special wine tour can be booked where you can taste very expensive wines and Alexander who does this tour is very enthusiastic and entertaining. A great stay and I will certainly return.

We booked this stay many months in advance as a 2 night country retreat between city breaks. The welcome email about a week before arrival advised us that their Michelin starred restaurant was fully booked for the duration of our stay. It would have been useful to have known this might be an issue. They did, however, ask us to advise them of our arrival time which we said would be 3pm. We arrived as expected to be told the room would not be available until 4.00, normal check in time. The time we spent hanging around could have been usefully spent being introduced to the estate, but it was not. In the main most staff seemed to have far more interesting things to do than look after guests. When we finally got into the room it was very nice, as was dinner at the beach that evening. During our stay the chateau was very busy preparing for a big weekend. A huge semi permanent marquee was being constructed and the place was overrun with construction workers who used the pool washroom facilities and had lunch in the soft seating areas. The strong feeling was that the guests there at the time were a distant second priority to the upcoming wedding. The marquee construction was in front of the pool and there was zero acknowledgment that some people we’re trying to enjoy a quiet time. There were numerous examples of lack of attention to detail expected of a five star hotel and generally little evidence of management on the ground. At no time over 2 days did anyone come down to the pool area just to make sure everything was ok and at no time did anyone enquire as to whether we we’re having a good stay. Two positive notes to finish on. The barman in the jazz bar was delightful and we were presented with some lovely wine as an apology for the delay in getting into our room. A nice gesture which was thoughtful but not thought through (we are flying back to UK with little spare baggage allowance). Takeaways. The basis for an excellent resort is there but management needs to pay attention to the little things and engage with guests at the time when things go wrong. No doubt the response will be “why didn’t you tell us”. The answer is it’s your job to check. I never normally give bad reviews so I hope this is useful to the hotel and prospective guests.

A lovely estate with lots of things to discover and do (walk the vineyards, discover the viewing point over the estate and local area, pool, gym, spa, bar, etc.) but the place falls short of being a 5 star experience. The entrance section of the hotel was being remodelled so you were greeted by a building site which didn't leave a great first impression - no apology or advance warning of this by email or staff. Rooms and facilities up to latest standard; we really enjoyed view and stay in a Junior Suite and exploring the wine cellar/tasting room was a great experience. Dinner on site sadly somewhat disappointing - restaurant worryingly understaffed with 3 waiters trying to cater for about 20 tables. Several reminders necessary to move onto next course or get a glass of wine... staff very dedicated but just couldn't deliver and if you wait for 20+ mins to move from one course to the next, you do wonder what you're paying for actually. Again no recognition or apology of what was clearly woeful service that evening. The food was OK but didn't offer any (positive) surprises - both the hotel restaurant and the fine dining restaurant offer *good* food, but not to a standard you would expect given the price tag and setting of the hotel. Generally, it seemed the place was good at overselling itself (not hard to do given setting and location) but the staff (while dedicated) weren't attuned to deliver a 5 star experience. Really torn whether to come again - on one hand we had a great time because of the facilities and immediate area of the hotel, but the price tag and 5 star label were not delivered against when we were there.