Relais & Châteaux Hardenberg BurgHotel

Excellent hotel in beautiful surroundings. Great restaurant and outstanding service. Highly recommended and well worth a long detour.

Sorry to say, but we were a bit disappointed with this hotel. As a hotel it is fine, but as it's part of Relais & Châteaux we expected the quality of the hotel and especially their service to be of that standard. It was not. One example: The restaurant was half full, but we still had to wait 5 minutes for them to see if they could find us a table. And there were only one more couple who came to dine after us, so I guess it was not because of reservations. Just very young and unexperienced staff. Mixup in order during breakfast. No continous fill up at the breakfast buffet. Forgot to bring orders.

Beautiful hotel with very friendly staff! Highly recommend :)

A beautiful and very interesting hotel with gorgeous walks and scenery around. The rooms are comfortable and well designed but a little basic. The restaurant is really very excellent and I recommend reserving a table during your stay. Breakfast was fantastic. The location feels very rural but is very close to town and the A7. Price feels about 10% too high but we really enjoyed our stay and will happily come back. I recommend a suite with a terrace since there is no air conditioning and you will want to open a window.

Update: 2 years later we have come back and nothing has changed! Best location, great rooms and excellent food and service. A place with a real heart! We stay at many R&C hotels and you always feel part of family and this was especially true here. Everyone was so friendly. Our room was lovely overlooking the equestrian ring. They really take care of their guests including their dog guests with a lovely bowl and a large beautiful dog bed. I loved that you could have a Nespresso coffee in your room early in the morning, followed by a lovely dog walk in their forest visiting the lovely castle ruins to which they give their guests access (ask for the keys at reception). Arriving hungry back at the hotel, their breakfast doesn’t disappoint - so many different choices of fish, cheeses and meats as well as spreads and jams. The hotel happily arranges a round of golf for you at the local well maintained golf course. In the afternoon, you can enjoy a complimentary coffee, tea, glass of wine or Prosecco in front of the fire before heading to dinner. Dinner and wines were great. My husband especially enjoyed their aged distillery spirits. The menu seems to have a long duration so if you are staying for several days you might ask them for nice local restaurant recommendations.

Some qualities of this five star hotel is there - idyllic location, cozy surroundings and nice (but not fantastic) food in the restaurant and for breakfast. But the rooms are small, run down and smells of cigarette smoke. The service in not what I would expect in this segment of hotels. But a big advantage is the location close to autobahn 7 when going up and down through Europe.

We were looking for a relaxing hotel with German personality that was not too far from the Autobahn, and this fit the bill perfectly! The setting under the old castle is idyllic - my husband enjoyed his hike to see it up close. The room was very comfortable with a view and small balcony looking at the castle. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and found the service to be delightful and the food delicious. Also had the house cocktail and later the house wine - great recommendations. Breakfast was even better than dinner. That said, the cost of the two meals was about equal to the price of the room. We walked the grounds and wished we had more time to enjoy them - the property is very well maintained.

Even though this hotel has a great view of the small castle and a fine view of the horse track, we were disapointed by the hotel and especially the service of the staff. This is not up to the normal standard for Relais & Châteaux member hotels.