Royal Club Hotel

The spa area was very nice, and the hotel is close to the Danube, with clean, spacious rooms. Dinner was great, though breakfast wasn’t as good. There’s a useful kitchen corner in the suite, but having to request cutlery is inconvenient. Parking and a service fee cost extra, and room service adds 4000HUF, which can easily double the price of a meal if you eat in your room.

The hotel needs improvements before its four-star rating and current price feel justified. We’d love to return if things get better, but several parts of our stay disappointed us. The suite had dark blinds on just one window in each bedroom. The other window had a see-through blind, so outside light came in early and disturbed our sleep. I imagine that’s worse in summer. The kitchen had no cutlery by default, which is very impractical, as other guests have mentioned. The spa had no thermal water, and the wet sauna was out of order for both days we were there. That left one traditional Finnish dry sauna and three infrared dry saunas, whose heat wasn’t even. Although the spa was meant to open at 7:00, the sauna hadn’t been heated beforehand, even though we’d asked the day before, so we couldn’t enjoy it until much later. No staff were around in the morning to hand out towels, and we had to ask repeatedly for the hot tub jets to be switched on, then wait 15 minutes. Service at meals also felt inattentive. Our room service combination meal arrived without either of the two salads, so we had to call and remind them. Dinner itself was delicious, and the tiramisu was awesome. At breakfast we had to tell staff three separate times that food had run out. The hotel wasn’t full, which made me wonder how this is handled at full capacity. Good service would make the automatic room service charge feel fair. Without it, guests are left disappointed and feeling taken advantage of. They also charged for outdoor parking in a nearly empty lot, not a garage, without pointing that out.

The rooms are super nice and spacious, clean, well maintained, and equipped with all the utilities you need. The wellness area is great for families of any age, and the hotel itself is amazing. What let it down was the limited breakfast and dinner selection, which was never refilled until we asked several times. That doesn’t feel like four-star service. Staff also collect the leftovers after the last guest, which felt a little weird and made it uncomfortable to be the last one eating.

The hotel staff and restaurant both get five stars from me, and the Jacuzzi was amazing. The cleaning crew gets none. Our room was lovely and clean when we arrived, but after we put out the “please make our room” sign one morning, we came back seven hours later to find nobody had come. When we asked for cleaning, she only made the bed. We were tired and had dinner delivered to the room, so we didn’t want to keep asking her to come back.