Hotel Tauernhof

All in all, we had a good holiday - not an all-time great holiday, but we had a fun time with friends and family. What we liked: 1) Location: Großarl is about an hour south of Salzburg, and the Großarltal is a beautiful valley with great hikes and fantastic views. 2) Hotel: Most of the hotel is quite freshly renovated and has a modern, yet alpine-rustic style. We liked our room, with its south facing balcony, and enjoyed some of the amenities a lot. Most notably: the kids playrooms & playground, and the pools (a large jacuzzi, one indoor-outdoor pool, one outdoor pool and a shallow kids pool). 3) Food: Breakfast was the meal of the day. A fantastic, big buffet with a few fun features such as the waffle maker that our son really enjoyed. Brilliant fresh bread, lots of local produce, and eggs made to order. What didn't work: 1) Building noise. The hotel next door, and several others in the village, are doing a huge renovations right now (June 2023). We counted 9 cranes standing in front of the hotel. The noise was constant from 6 am to past 9 pm. We could not use our balcony or leave windows open over night without getting a loud wake-up call - and the rooms were super stuffy with closed windows, so we did not manage to sleep in at all on our holiday. We also couldn't use the hotel's beautiful outdoor terrace - it was just too loud. We would have appreciated it if the hotel had informed us of the building works before we arrived, as we would have booked elsewhere. The discount we received at checkout, after complaining, didn't make up for lost sleep. 2) Evening meals: Generally the evening meals were good (salad buffet, 4 courses to choose from plus a cheese buffet); however, on one evening we sadly experienced a kitchen meltdown. There was a party elsewhere in the hotel, and the kitchen did not cope. We stayed in the restaurant for 2 hours, had a starter and soup, and after multiple complaints managed to get main courses for our children. Then we left, without having made it to the main course ourselves, as the kids just couldn't sit still any longer. The hotel responded to our feedback on this very well though, and we think/hope that this was a one-off issue. I would still rate this as a four-star experience (3.5 stars if that was an option on TripAdvisor), but it wasn't flawless. The generosity and superb organisation that we've been lucky enough to experience on other holidays in Austria were not present here, but it is a nice place to stay overall.