Olympia

The ski set-up is really easy here. They work with a local rental shop, so picking up and returning gear takes hardly any time, and there’s a basement ski room with a boot-drying locker for every room. The food is excellent, with creative cooking based on regional dishes and local ingredients. Rooms are comfortable, clean, and well equipped. The family who run the place and the staff are welcoming and efficient. This was my third visit, and I’ll be back.

When someone in our group had a birthday, the hotel arranged a lovely cake, and after we accidentally left an iPad in the room they sent it straight to our home. That kind of care stood out. Christopher’s wine tasting was another highlight, with some delicious Austrian wines. Hotel Olympia in Obergurgl is a warm, family-run place with beautiful surroundings, great food, and a very friendly, attentive team. We had a fantastic stay and would recommend it.

The bathroom in room 206 had a really bad waste-pipe smell throughout the week, which is why I’ve given the room one star. I reported it on the first day, but nothing changed. The next day the bath and shower stopped draining, and a plastic bag was found blocking the pipes. After that, the drains worked again, but the awful smell came back. I also heard someone at breakfast say the steam room smelled of sewer. An engineer had been called, but the smell was still there. The hotel itself is lovely, well placed for the ski school and lifts, and the family and staff are very welcoming.

We came back after enjoying a suite here last year, and had booked this one a year ahead. The hotel is lovely when you get a room without a smell, as we did in room 201 before. The food is exceptional and the staff are very friendly. But suite 206 made this stay a huge disappointment, and the sewage smell ruined much of our holiday. At first, when we arrived, there was a drain smell but we thought we could manage it. Once people started using the toilets that evening, it became unbearable, even with the windows open. We tried filling the bath and sinks and covering the outlets with wet toilet paper, and shut the doors, but the smell still reached the bedroom and lounge. The shower was also blocked and drained very slowly. I covered its drain with toilet paper to limit the smell, removing it when we showered. We couldn’t use the bath after skiing, and couldn’t comfortably spend the evenings in the lounge we had booked the suite for. Breathing in that smell didn’t feel healthy either. We told management as soon as we could, on Sunday morning. The manageress had been waitressing Saturday night, and we didn’t want to interrupt her then. We asked about moving, but were told the hotel was full. She said a plumber would come Monday, and that previous guests in the suite hadn’t complained, which I find hard to believe given how bad it was. The plumber cleared the shower drain and poured a very strong lemon freshener down the drains. After that it smelled of both lemons and sewage. On Tuesday the manageress said the plumber had found toilet paper in the shower drain. I explained I’d put it there to block the smell and took it out to shower. I said things were a little better, but we decided to make the best of the holiday, and it was clear she wasn’t going to move us. The improvement was actually from our efforts to block the drains, not the plumbing work. On Wednesday night the water in the bath that had been covering the plug drained away, and the smell was unbearable again. We spent the evening with all the windows open, though it was quite cold. I found earlier Trip advisor reviews mentioning a drain or sewage smell in the second-floor suite, and then saw a new Google review about the very same room, 206. The issue wasn’t resolved, and I don’t think the response time was acceptable. The smell was extremely unpleasant and unhygienic; we couldn’t use the bathroom in the evenings or the bath at all. The hotel shouldn’t rent that suite until the problem is fixed.