The Heritage Hotel Hallstatt is the top-rated hotel in Hallstatt according to most travel sites. Don’t let this fact throw you off and you might be ok. This is not a 5-star hotel if you have stayed at any decent hotel in Asia, if it wasn’t situated where it is, it’s be a about a 3 or 4 star max. Having said that, there’s not a whole lot wrong with it and it’s fine for a few nights, which is really all you need in Hallstatt. First thing to know is if you’ve hired a car (highly recommended), everybody has to park at the end of town and either walk or get a shuttle bus to their hotel. The Heritage Hotel Hallstatt is situated at the opposite end of the car par, so the walks about 1km, no problem if you don’t have heavy suitcases, but if you do, and it’s the middle of summer, it’s a bit of a walk especially with kids. They give you instructions to call a shuttle bus but we waited about 30 minutes while the Shuttle Bus driver had a nice phone conversation, not really caring that we were waiting. Anyway eventually we got to the hotel.
Hallstatt
In an email from the Heritage Hotel Hallstatt, they told us we were going to get a room upgrade to a Suite with Balcony so I was excited about that. However, when we got to the hotel, they just stuck us in a standard room. After some calls to the front desk we discovered that the Suite wasn’t available because it had some plumbing problems. This is all fine, but tell us that at reception, don’t just promise a Suite, stick us in a standard room, and hope we don’t notice. In the end, we might have been able to move after a night to the suite, but when you’ve unpacked all your shit it’s a real pain in the ass to pack everything back up and unpack again after 1 night. Somewhat to the hotels credit, they did apologise and bribed us with a free three course dinner at their restaurant that night. So we ended up staying in a standard room which was a bit small, but ok. It’s got a balcony about the size of a toilet, and a toilet about the size of a balcony. Beautiful view from the balcony but there’s a car park just below and if I’m being a real toffee nose twat, that kind of takes away from the view a bit.
The dinner was actually quite good, the best Wiener Schnitzel I’d had in 6 days, and if you’ve read my post about Vienna, you’d know I basically lived off it. The one hotel restaurant is by the car park but still overlooks the lake. Breakfast was also pretty good, not brilliant but perfectly acceptable and no complaints. The town is small so if you’re not into the hotel food there’s plenty of other places nearby you can try out, but you’ll be limited to Austrian and Italian. There’s also a supermarket across the road so you can stock up on snacks and drinks. Overall the restaurant, food and beverage was pretty good.
Heritage Hotel Hallstatt View From Room
This is subjective, but I think the Heritage Hotel Hallstatt has the best location in Hallstatt, it’s at the end, is right below a boat hire, and is probably the least busy area. If you want to take a ferry ride around the lake, it comes in right outside (don’t take it, just hire a little battery powered boat and blurt around in that). It’s the hotel closest to the view point looking back on the town – the view you will see in all the photos if you Google “Hallstatt”, and you can get a shuttle bus back to the car park easily. You can see fish and feed the swans or come by during the day and there’s a little area you can swim from so everything is 1 minute away.
Overall the staff were ok, better than what you get in Vienna, but don’t expect to make any best friends and shoot the shit with any of the staff with the exception of the porter/shuttle bus driver. He was from the Czech Republic and an awesome guy, gave our son a feather from his parrot and took us down to the car park as soon as we were ready (didn’t have to wait for the actual time to depart). He also took me down to the petrol station to get an emergency fag and had a bit of a chat with him.
Apart from the cock-up regarding the suite, the Heritage Hotel Hallstatt is fine to stay in. Just don’t expect luxury and you’ll be fine.
The Heritage Hotel Hallstatt website is here.
Visit our Salzkammergut Region Destination Guide here.
