Garni Hotel Frohburg

If this hotel was nearer to Lake Lucerne, it would be in it! The ferry around the lake passes about 100 yards from your balcony and the ferry station is less than 5 minutes walk away. The room is not flashy but it has everything you need. Breakfast at the hotel next door (Central) was excellent and was taken on a sunny terrace with great views (and no music - hurray!) Staff were pleasant and helpful. Overall, our room was very quiet, although there is a restaurant next door and, one night, there were very noisy patrons there until after 11 p.m. The Frohburg does not have its own car park. There is a public car park to the side which is CHF 6 a day or CHF 20 for the week. We always managed to find a space there or across the road but, at busy times, it may be difficult to park close to the hotel. We enjoyed our stay here.

Before telling about the hotel we did stay at it needs to be established that the photos on hotels.com where we booked represent the mother hotel - Central - where all facilities are located. Including the reception. Ok it's only 75m away, but still. It is a clear misrepresentation to show a pool, and stylish rooms of another hotel. It only takes a couple of minutes to take proper photos of the actual property, stating clearly that ALL facilities are at a neighbour hotel and potential guests can make up their mind whether or not to book it. The Frohburg is actually quite ok. Rooms are large with good baths and seem fairly newly renovated with fantastic lake and alp views. A nice sunterrace with direct access to the lake. The breakfast and pool at the main hotel is great and at the small marina one can rent pedal oats and SUPs. There are also a restaurant that we never tried. All in all Frohburg is certainly not three star and certainly not at par with the price quoted. But this is Switzerland and Weggis... If the price difference is small why would anyone stay here rather than at the main hotel. If the owners also renovate the outside of the building it will probably be a quite ok 2/3 star facility.

Firstly on Weggis- 100% stay here rather than Lucerne. There’s not tons to do in Weggis save for cable car, boat trip and walks but the views are amazing and it’s the far better place to stay than some of the bigger towns. There’s a small supermarket and restaurants etc so certainly enough to be going on with. We visited Lucerne via boat and were so pleased we stayed in the quieter Weggis. The boat trip was fab. You really get the feel of being in the swiss lakes here which we didn’t get in Lucerne. Onto the hotel- It is partnered with hotel central so it is at that hotel where you check in, have breakfast etc. This was not a problem for us as it’s just a skip across a small car park to get there- if you think of it as basically a separate out building/wing of the main hotel that’s probably about right. Breakfast options were ok but nothing amazing. We stayed in the riviera loft which was their most expensive room. This room was on the ground floor and has its own private patio terrace with patio furniture, parisol etc. It is on the lake so you could step off the patio into the lake (stairs like in a swimming pool to it) and the views are uninterrupted. Room itself was gorgeous, lovely jacuzzi bath, comfy bed, great shower. So far so good. The room is advertised as having a kitchen/kitchenette which is why we booked the room given that we wanted to cook our own food. When we arrived we found that the kitchen was no more than a show kitchen. There was not a single spoon, knife, fork, plate or bowl in there. No saucepan, cleaning or cooking utensils or kettle. Save for a coffee machine with two tiny cups, it was empty. We raised it with one of the chaps from the hotel who appeared fairly junior. He was very kind but said that these items were not included and was not meant to be a fully equipped kitchen. We asked to speak to the manager as it seemed ridiculous to us that the place advertises a kitchen on booking.com when in reality the kitchen could not be used. We were also a bit disappointed by this particularly when we had paid nearly £650 for two nights. We spoke to the manager and long story short he was not very helpful and appeared to us to be very petty with customer service near to the bottom of his list. The fact that we had pre paid likely served as no incentive for him to care two hoots as to whether we were enjoying our stay or not. He seemed to think we were barmy for questioning why there was nothing to use to even make a cup of tea. We found him insincere. He kept only repeating that on booking.com whilst it said that it had a kitchen, it does not say it is equipped and we were not paying for an apartment but a hotel room. He said the kitchen would not be intended to be used unless if someone booked to stay for a month or more?! There is no option on booking.com to select kitchen and then to select equipped kitchen so his stance on this still makes no sense but there we are. Eventually we agreed with him that the basics would be provided and they would reduce the cost of our stay by circa £80 for the inconvenience but it wasn’t easily agreed and for a while the best he offered was to have a drink each in the bar. When the goods arrived they were sparse but we didn’t have an appetite for another encounter so we just got on with it- we ended up having to use glasses as serving dishes for dinner and cups as bowls. We didn’t have a toaster and the two pans provided were obviously old tat from the hotel kitchen. We had one tiny spatula which was heavily used and stained. Shake bearing in mind the cost. We wouldn’t stay here again but only because at management level customer service was hugely lacking. The young man from reception who helped us (unfortunately didn’t catch his name) was brilliant and went out of his way to locate a kettle for us etc and so if we were to visit again we would only do so when he’s been promoted to manage the hotel (!!!) The hotel and our stay was saved by the view, the room, location and customer service of the younger man from reception. If it wasn’t for these things we would have been even more disappointed. If you don’t mind paying a lot of money for a room with a kitchen you can’t use then book the riviera loft, it’s beautiful but also say a little prayer that nothing goes wrong whilst you’re there as the manager won’t be quick to help you. We still had a good time in a beautiful part of the world m but no thanks to the management for that.