Hotel Belvédère

Spiez is a very small town and while the hotel is not in the center of town it is within a 10 minute walk of the center. It is an excellent jumping-off place for excursions by foot in the surrounding countryside. Do not expect a city-center hotel with internet cafes, shopping, and eating at the doorstep--all of that can be had, but it requires a 10 minute walk.

There is nothing which is too much for the hotel staff to do. The Migros in Spiez only accepts Mastercard, not Visa, but I was not carrying a Mastercard...and the staff at the Strandhotel Belvedere had only to hear this to pick up the telephone and call the Migros in Interlaken to discover whether that branch of the store accepts Mastercard (which it does.) No statement such as "Why don't you check the internet, Sir?" but rather just immediately springing into action to make the guest's life as easy and painless and pleasurable as possible. Such an attitude was evident again and again and again. I hardly had to ask for a breakfast-to-go on my last morning before flying home to the United States...I believe the staff may even have suggested that I might like to take a meal along (since I would depart before the restaurant opened) rather than waiting for me to request a meal-to-go.

I ate the breakfast in the hotel but was out walking (to Interlaken, to Erlenbach, to the Niesenkulm) on all other days so did not patronize the restaurant on premises. But it certainly has won awards for its culinary excellence and I am sure it is wonderful.

Spa (with pool) looked very attractive but I did not use it--I preferred to be outdoors than inside. The hotel has a laptop in the lobby for use by guests to check e-mail, etc., which is extremely useful; I did not have to go to the public library on the other side of town to keep up with questions from my colleagues at work. As a single traveller I did not make use of any child care which the hotel might provide.

While I thought the room lovely and in no need of renovation obviously management does not share this opinion and has scheduled a massive, months-long renovation. The room comes with the amenity of fruit when arriving on the first day--how nice, after a transatlantic airplane flight where nothing genuinely fresh has been served--and the bathroom is well stocked with amenities. To help the environment a switch from the current CRT to an LCD television in each room could be considered but I don't feel this is terribly important. It would be nice if the motion detectors in the hallway which light up the corridors when they detect someone opening the door of his/her room to exit into the corridor would allow the lights to stay on slightly longer but again, this is a minor complaint. I will say that the walls are slightly thin--one can too easily hear noise from neighboring guests--but again, this is probably something that will be remedied as the hotel is renovated.

I have spent a total of six five-day long vacations in the Belvedere since 2003, always in the month of October, and have had only one day when it rained. So October seems to be a good month for weather which permits outdoor activities. In the 8 years since 2003 the price of a guestroom facing the mountains has not risen by one Franc. This is amazing. What one receives for 95 CHF per night makes this hotel one of the best bargains in the world!