Cortisen Am See - Adults Only

“Excellent service, very friendly staff, and a cosy, welcoming atmosphere.”

Excellent service, very friendly staff, and a cosy, welcoming atmosphere. As an added bonus, the pool and sauna facilities are wonderful, and the surrounding area offers beautiful lakeside walks and stunning views from the hills. Highly recommended!

“Absolutely lovely!”

The hotel owner Roland and his staff are cheerful, friendly and helpful. The hotel was spotlessly clean. Every detail had been thought of in advance - I needed nothing extra to make the stay superb. We would definitely visit again and I have recommended it to several friends. We did not eat in the … lisää

The hotel owner Roland and his staff are cheerful, friendly and helpful. The hotel was spotlessly clean. Every detail had been thought of in advance - I needed nothing extra to make the stay superb. We would definitely visit again and I have recommended it to several friends. We did not eat in the restaurant as wanted to sample the local restaurants.

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“Really sorry... gaudy, impersonal, pretentious”

I am really struggling with writing this review… the Cortisen has a lot going for it as other reviews have pointed out, not least its wonderful location by the lake (although the view of the lake is sadly obstructed by the monstrosity which is the Scalaria Hotel on the left). However, it was diffic… lisää

I am really struggling with writing this review… the Cortisen has a lot going for it as other reviews have pointed out, not least its wonderful location by the lake (although the view of the lake is sadly obstructed by the monstrosity which is the Scalaria Hotel on the left). However, it was difficult to find it likeable for numerous reasons… Our room was on the second floor with a lovely balcony. It was not overly big for €300/night and lacked basic facilities such as a coffee/tea-maker (I acknowledge these often seem to be lacking in Austria for some strange reason when they are standard in most other countries in much cheaper hotels). The hot water took ages to warm up each time. We were pleased to learn that the hotel offered late breakfast (until 11am) but the walls are paper-thin and a lot of noise started before 8am with housekeeping staff thumping our door well before 9am (we did find the “do not disturb” sign at the bottom of the wardrobe on day 2). The thinness of the walls also meant that we got to enjoy the full sound effects of our neighbours’ romantic get-togethers (we did applaud a couple of times at particularly energetic moments). The pillows were extremely thin and limp and there was no pillows menu to request different ones (or at least more). The breakfast is marketed as a “seven-course luxurious alternative” to the common hotel buffet breakfast. It did indeed consist of seven “courses” – drinks (coffee, tea, juice), cereal, breads, a meat/cheese plate, Prosecco, a cooked egg dish and cake. In other words, this is exactly the fare you would find at a breakfast buffet – only less variety and in smaller quantities. The breads were limited to two dry rolls per person; cake meant one dust-dry slice of madeira or cocoa cake. As heavy rain was forecast for one day of our stay, we decided to enjoy the wonderful pool and spa facilities and have a pamper day. Unfortunately, Wednesday was the masseur’s day off (we had thought that there was more than one treatment room and thus more than one staff member). Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time swimming and enjoying the saunas. My absolute favourite was the lake-view sauna in the boathouse building, not only for the view but also for allowing me to be brave enough to walk out of the sauna and jump straight into the lake (even on a cooler, rainy day this was absolute bliss!) We did note with concern that the whole pool area was extremely slippery (to be expected) – unfortunately, the slippers provided by the hotel were like ice-skates and we both slipped repeatedly in the puddles. Maybe the hotel could provide rubber-sole flip-flops for the spa area? The hotel’s interior décor is definitely… unique. In our opinion, it was a horrible mish-mash of styles and colours in what can best be described as “gaudy”. The public areas mixed Victorian-style prints of hunting scenes with art deco table-lamps, pink sofas, oriental rugs, plastic-looking chandeliers and what looked like primary-school kids’ finger paintings. As for our room, let’s just say, red-green-purple is not a colour combination that works well most of the time. However, what irked us most was a general air of pretentiousness. This seemed to emanate mostly from the owner/manager (in fairness, most of the staff were Eastern European and seemed extremely inexperienced except for the blonde lady at reception who oozed arrogance). One rainy night, we were dying for a cup of tea so in the absence of a kettle, I went down to the bar to ask for some hot water. I encountered the owner who could barely conceal his contempt at my request. He did fill two mugs with hot water and handed them to me on a silver tray instructing me to “leave them on the tray at all times as we don’t want stains on the furniture”. Given that there were both water and wine glasses in the room, both of which perfectly capable of leaving stains, this felt extremely patronising. To the owner who appears to write scathing replies to negative reviews: No, I don’t take any enjoyment in writing bad reviews as you will see if you check the hundreds of other, overwhelmingly positive reviews I have written. And no, I am definitely not angling for a discount/refund etc. We were really sorry to not like this hotel more. Maybe this was due to our expectations of a warm, cosy, family-run hotel rather than a gaudy, pretentious and impersonal establishment that felt overpriced for what it was.

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“A lovely suite but too hot for us!”

The (Black) suite was very nice and the dinners good. However we ended up with a disappointing stay and we wouldn’t return due to the afternoon & early evening heat in the room. We asked for an electric fan shortly after we arrived but the owner said he didn’t have any and suggested we should leave… lisää

The (Black) suite was very nice and the dinners good. However we ended up with a disappointing stay and we wouldn’t return due to the afternoon & early evening heat in the room. We asked for an electric fan shortly after we arrived but the owner said he didn’t have any and suggested we should leave the windows open during Dinner and it would be fine afterwards. We like to enjoy our room in the afternoon but due to the heat we had to have the curtains closed to try to keep the room a bit cooler so could not enjoy the view - and getting ready to go out for Dinner - was uncomfortably hot. Our sleep was also affected. A simple provision of an electric fan would likely have done the trick but the hotel was not able to offer one! Prior to flying out from Gatwick our 58 Euro equivalent Premier Inn room acknowledged the issue and a fan was provided in the room prior to arrival but here - in our 450 Euro room - we had to manage without one! We weren’t able to use the lovely balcony either as there was absolutely no protection from the sun which - with one of us having had skin cancer - was no use. Consequently we had a lovely - but totally impractical - room. We raised it with the owner again at checkout and he did seem sorry and said we should have gone back to him - maybe he should in fact have sought us out at breakfast the following morning to check if our issue was resolved. I notice that, in a recent reply to a critical review, the owner talks about customers trying to blackmail him and ‘serial complainers’. So, for the record, we did not ask for any reduction to our 3500 Euro bill - and, if you look at our other TA reviews, we are usually quite happy!!

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