Chateau Hotel La Barbiniere

Comentarios destacados

• bonvi_advisor

  20 julio 2018
  Peaceful atmosphere

  Chateau de la Barbiniere is a beautiful and peaceful place located out in out the way village of Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre in the northern Loire. I had 2 nights stay during my last business trip in this region. My room was located in an out-building and was spacious, clean and well equipped. Bed and pillows were really comfortable. I can only claim the noise comes from the floor when someone walk around. Good breakfast service with a plenty of choices of sweet and fresh fruits. I also had dinner twice at the hotels garden restaurant and everything was delicious and well presented. Definitely its a nice place to stay.

  

• ambertamaki

  14 abril 2019
  Exquisite

  This Château was a haven of peace and tranquility. Strolling the grounds is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. The food was delicious, breakfast was perfect. We stayed in the castle part on the top floor. While there was no elevator for your bags, there was extremely helpful staff. I would highly recommend this accommodation to friends and family and hope to return one day for a week stay. Very relaxing and inspiring environment.

  

• mmall73

  22 mayo 2019
  Team Building

  The place is excellent Quite, ideally for business meetings and not only. The rooms are clean and spacious. The nature around the building is something else. You can work, enjoy, walk, relax. The owners and stuff are friendly and keen to serve you. The hotel restaurant is just fantastic. Limited menu choices but will satisfy even the most demanding people. Wine list... whoaoo I havent seen something better. Very well done. I recommend it without any hesitation.

  

• Angela R

  20 junio 2019
  Good accommodation poor restaurant

  The hotel itself was fine clean etc we had a family room and it was very adequate . The chateau itself is pretty as are the grounds . We chose it as it was near the Puy du fou park and it looked impressive on the photos etc . HOWEVER ! Someone made a huge error with the decor of the restaurant and bar . It has a very modern cheap looking style ... I have read some of the previous reviews and I cant believe we were in the same place ! Its far from the atmosphere you expect when u look at the exterior I would give it 3/10 . A total shame and disappointment . The staff in the main were friendly but mostly inexperienced.... the food was poor , apart from the steak and although the wine list is impressive a lot of the wines were unavailable . As for the breakfast! Consisted of stale breads / croissant was limited and basic ... and at 50 Euro for 2 adults / 2 children was quite frankly an insult DONT bother with it . In fact I wouldnt bother with the restaurant at all poor value for what u get .

  

• BSM72

  09 septiembre 2020
  If only!

  The best way I can describe this hotel is to compare it with the business class cabin of a long-range Dreamliner aircraft of a good (but not quite top) international airline : seats that convert into a fully lie-flat bed, privacy dividers and wide individual video screens : i.e. the works, but nothing truly exceptional. Add to it an even better-quality galley, still always business class. Please note that I use the analogy to business class not to first class: this is after all a 4-star hotel (in my view only just) and not a luxury 5-star Relais & Châteaux. Now, hand it over to a run-of-the mill decorator with a taste for a clean minimalistic look and for lower quality materials in bright colours and ask him to re-upholster the seats and to change the floor and wall coverings. THEN, ask Ryanair to provide its most disliked cabin crew. You know the one I mean, it's the one where you feel the hostesses have been recruited on the basis of their ability to be nasty to passengers and seem to take it out on them as if it were some form of additional salary in kind. With that in mind you have the Chateau-Hotel de la Barbinière, namely a completely mixed bag : 4 TA dots for the rooms and buildings, 5 for the restaurant, 2 for the decoration and a fail for service. It is a small hotel (30 rooms) which has an awful lot going for it : - A really quite nice 19th century manor house which seems to have been fully renovated sometime in the past ten years (19th century because all the castles and churches in the region were burned and destroyed to the ground during the French Revolution) ; - Nearly 30 acres of outstanding grounds with a big outdoor swimming pool and a three-hole pitch and putt golf course ; Close proximity (8 km) to the world-acclaimed historical theme park of Le Puy du Fou, from which the hotel derives probably most of its clientele ; - A new young and very talented chef who has just been recruited : we had a dinner which was truly worthy of a one Michelin star ; and one can only hope the chef will not move on too soon ; - Our room and our bathroom were spotlessly clean ; - The bedding was of excellent quality ; and finally - There was no lack of staff, as I counted four waiters for eleven 2- or 4-seat tables being served for dinner for 60-70% occupancy We stayed only one night at La Barbinière, had dinner and breakfast with all of my family on a recent two-day visit to the Puy du Fou : my wife, our children, our grandchildren aged 2 to 6 and the au pair, 12 people in all . But what an absolute nightmare as soon as one came into contact with the staff. During my less than 24-hour stay, I crossed paths with 7 members of staff, and I have reported to the general manager 11 separate incidents linked to 5 of those 7 members of staff. I don't know if it was Murphy's law or if every client has shared the same experience and either didn't care or did not know enough about the hospitality industry in France to know what to expect from a 4-star hotel in terms of service. I won't bore you with the details, let me just say that the attitude of four of the five members of staff against whom I have grievances was unbelievably unhelpful and, as for the fifth, it was a case of ordinary rudeness, but followed by blatant and aggressive mendacity when confronted. This last one was a person who I understand might even be part of the hotel's management, although she was serving at the breakfast buffet at the time. I will just give you one example from the 11 incidents of what I mean by an abnormally unhelpful behaviour. We came in for breakfast and the hostess asked for our room numbers and the number of guests which I duly gave her. I then added that it would be appropriate for her to have an additional table for six set up, as my son and his family, who could not be accommodated overnight at La Barbinière, would be arriving shortly to join us for breakfast. The hostess looked straight at me and all she said was "NO!" and not one word more. Let me assure you that it was not a "no" of interrogation or surprise, it was a definitive firm "no negative" and she didn't even try to follow up. I don't personally count this laconic response as rudeness - I will let you decide for yourselves - but it certainly was unhelpful. I was so stunned that, having asked her to repeat and again getting a one-word "no" response, I left speechless to go to the buffet and let my wife explain to the hostess that this had been prearranged and agreed with the hotel. My son and his family duly arrived 5-10 minutes later and what do you think happened? Not only had no table been set up, but the hostess and the other lady serving breakfast refused to accommodate them. My son showed them the written confirmation message from the hotel on his smartphone, but before he was allowed in and a table set up, he had to go himself and fetch the receptionist so that she could confirm in person to the ladies that the message was for real !!! If this does not qualify as a case of utter and total unhelpfulness, then I don't belong in this brave new world. Some will think : easy ! This whole unpleasant mix-up was due to the language barrier. Well no! All of my family and I happen to be French living in France As you can see from my record of infrequent contributions on TripAdvisor, I am more in the habit of writing about hotels I truly like and, when I do have complaints, I hope they will lead to corrective action. In the case of La Barbinière, the problem is staff training, guidance and supervision. I am sure you now understand what I meant by the comparison with Ryanair. However, I sincerely believe that a few days of professional training of the front office and dining room staff possibly even just a few hours could turn the situation around. This would naturally require the full support and leadership of the hotel's management. I fear, however, that the General Manager may be quite set in his ways : after all he promotes himself as "Creator of the hotel" on his LinkedIn page and, although probably younger than I, he is getting on in years,. I have therefore entitled this piece "IF ONLY !" because "if only" the General Manager would retire and hand over the management to a new team which could educate and re-motivate the staff, La Barbinière could become a truly wonderful place. As an aside, for my money the new team could also make some changes to the decoration of the rooms: the photos on the hotel's website even if probably nicely touched up will tell you all you want to know on that score.