Zum Hirschen Hotel

We have just returned from a one week stay at this hotel and to say we were disappointed is an under statement!!! We were in Zell am See for a friends wedding and this hotel completely ruined what would have otherwise been a fantastic holiday. On arrival at the hotel the staff claimed that they had no record of us travelling with our baby son and they had therefore not provided a cot in our room. They provided a cot but told us that there would be a charge of 8 euro per night for this service. We disputed this as we had already been told by our agent in the UK that there would be no charge. My son would not sleep in the cot anyway and on closer inspection further into the week I was glad he hadn't. I brushed past the side of the cot and the whole thing almost collapsed, I found washers on the floor of the room that should have been holding it together but had clearly fallen off. There was also a sign underneath the mattress which said "do not leave child unattended" which indicates that this was infact a play pen with a mattress put into it to look like a cot! There were also tears in the fabric on the top and sides of the cot. I asked the hotel staff to remove the cot from the room on Monday evening and this was never done - the cot was still in the room when we left on Saturday.
The room was average to say the least. The bed was extremely uncomfortable and half the lights in the room did not work. Our friends who we were staying with also had problems with there room. The safety deposit box did not work and was never fixed despite them informing the reception staff about this on the first day. My friend also had the bathroom door fall off when she went to open it and was lucky not to be injured!!! The hotel lift also broke on one occasion. Fawlty Towers has nothing on this place!!!
We also had a major issue with getting boiled water to make my son's bottles. There was no kettle in the room and when we asked for one at reception we were told to go out and buy one. We then asked if we could have boiled water in a flask from the bar several times a day in order to make up feeds and sterilise bottles and were told that we could but that we would be charged 2 euros per flask!!! On speaking to the manageress about this we were told that there would be no charge as it was for making a baby's bottle. Despite this when we came to pay our room bill a 6 euro "service charge" for boiled water had been added to our bill. When we disputed this we were threatened that if we did not pay they would call the police!!! The manageress was rude, arrogant and unhelpfull just like the rest of her staff and proceeded to raise her voice towards my husband because he was querying this charge!!! The barman continually talked about us in German to other guests obviously assuming that we didn't understand him.
I have stayed in hotels all over the world and have never been treated so badly by hotel staff. Everything was too much effort for them and they were so arrogant and unhelpful! After speaking with our rep about all the problems he even agreed to write a letter of complaint to his head office regarding this hotel and the terrible attitude of the staff. I would recommend anyone travelling to this resort to steer well clear of this hotel unless you want to be treated like a second class citizen. We had friends staying in the Romantik which was 100% nicer with lovely rooms and friendly staff.