Aktivhotel Veronika

We had a wonderful stay! Beautiful chalet, fantastic food and an incredibly friendly and welcoming team. Worth 5 stars!

Let's start with the positives. Vaya is set in a great location near the centre of the village and bus stop and right next to the train station. Only a short (15 minute) walk to the slopes. There are some amazing mountain views from some of the bedrooms, the bedrooms are clean and spacious with a lovely balcony. The bathrooms are clean and modern and cleaned well each day with fresh towels, and the beds made up each morning. The hotel itself is attractive - wooden exterior and interior and clean. There is a lovely swimming pool with attractive mood lighting, The food is of pretty good quality but portions at dinner time are very small and lack any freshly cooked vegetables alongside. That said, the choice and spread of food at breakfast time is pretty impressive, with anything from cooked and cold fish, meats and cheese, to salad and fruit, to freshly baked breads and pastries. There is also a good choice of fruit juice and self-serve coffee and tea machines. Now for the negatives. THE TEAM: The staff, when you can find them, although trying their best a part of a poorly structured team, seem ill-prepared and poorly trained to deal with problems/busy periods. There seems to be a concentration on school interns who are shy and unsure. On top of this the more mature members of the team seem very stressed and morale is low with them working many hours a week under pressure in a busy hotel with a small team of workers spread too thinly across different parts of the operation. THE BAR: As for the bar, well you may as well give up any hope of ever being served as it is not manned and you wait up to an hour or more before a member of the team may eventually come over and ask if you would like anything. More often than not though you have to try and find a member of the team (usually on the reception) who informs you that they will find someone to help rather than just serving you themselves. That person often never materialises and if they did seemed annoyed and/or stressed that they had to serve you. Another staff told you they were too busy serving the restaurant and we wouldn't be served. We witnessed many of the guests getting very annoyed by the lack of bar attendance/inability to get a drink. The hotel must loose hundreds of Euros a week in lost revenue. Why they can't have the bar visible from the reception by having a window then the person on reception would be able to see the patrons waiting and go and serve them or call a member of the team to come over. Most nights we ended up going to a bar in the village. But the worst thing of all is the extremely poor way of managing the drinks bills. There were 7 rooms booked under our group of 14 and most nights they would only let us charge the drinks to what they called the "main guest", meaning all the drinks got billed to that room making it a headache to work out who owed what on departure day. Even worst than this is on departure day there were numerous charges for drinks for other guests on our bills. This is either caused by a system error or because they leave your receipts lying around on tables around the bar and restaurant with you room number on it which any guest can cross out and put another room number on. Despite raising this at departure and the receptionist assuring us she would sort it out she didn't and despite numerous emails sent to them after departure the drinks that were not ours have still not been refunded, so our group is out of pocket by nearly 200 Euros for drinks that were drunk by others guests! It's a shocking way to treat guests who have paid thousands of pounds to stay there for the week. THE TEMPERATURE: If you like living in a sauna then this hotel is for you, as you will be perspiring constantly. The rooms themselves are uncomfortably hot and you will be lying in a pool of sweat each night unless you keep your balcony door/window open to let the minus temperature air inside. The temperature in the bar area is also excessive. THE FOOD: Although generally positive (as mentioned above) the dinner portions are very small, the cooked meats (bacon, sausages) and fried eggs at breakfast are stone cold and unpleasant to eat. The selection of tinned watermelon/melon etc looks like it may be recycled from the previous day's leftovers as there were several pieces of melon that had mouth-shaped cut outs in them. The menu choice at dinner time is limited and the same 2 or 3 unhealthy choices for children each night. Also, be warned, they charge 4.50 Euros for a small bottle of tap water which is criminal considering tap water is always free to drink in any establishment. If you want water just bring your own bottle to the table and don't get ripped off. All in all a mixed bag really. I wouldn't stay there again due to the over charges on drinks that has not been resolved and the poor staffing structure and morale of the team.

We enjoyed it very much! Everything was well organized. The friendly host made it complete.