Golden Tulip West Ende

“A pleasant place to stay for a few days”

My wife and I, both of us UK based senior citizens, stayed at this hotel for four nights over New Year and it wasn’t too bad a place at all to call home for this holiday period. This wasn’t our choice of hotel, but rather where a coach company that we’d booked this tour through accommodated us, and… more

My wife and I, both of us UK based senior citizens, stayed at this hotel for four nights over New Year and it wasn’t too bad a place at all to call home for this holiday period. This wasn’t our choice of hotel, but rather where a coach company that we’d booked this tour through accommodated us, and they really couldn’t have chosen better, although we didn’t initially quite see it that way. On arrival we were told to stay on the coach and one of the tour operator’s staff went into the hotel to collect our key cards, as the other one started to unload our cases. This went well, and we were soon off the coach, collecting our luggage and on the way to our rooms. Now we wondered why everyone else seemed to have rooms on the first and second floors, when we were on the seventh and top floor, but we continued up on the lift thinking that we would have a spectacular view of Helmond. However, when we opened the door, we realised that there was no way on Earth that we could stay in this particular room, as it was on two levels - the bedroom being up a narrow, steep flight of stairs. Now, quite what the hotel staff were thinking was beyond us at that particular moment, as it’s a fairly well-known fact that coach trips are on the whole an elderly person’s game, and a high proportion of the passengers will be in the twilight of their lives and not as mobile as they once were. Anyway, we immediately went back down to Reception to ask for a room change. Now this was quite a bit of a bugbear considering that we were humping two fairly large suitcases around (we never travel lightly), so going up and down in a lift when we should have been relaxing in our room was not a good start to our stay in this hotel. Anyway, we were told that the hotel was full, and that they could not change our room. They also told us that our room was an upgrade, which I found a little bit supercilious, considering that I’m telling them that we weren’t able to climb up and down the stairs in our allocated room to go to bed each evening (also not taking into account the perilous climb down them if you needed the loo in the middle of the night, as being our advanced ages we certainly would need to do). I told the Reception staff that they would then need to find us another hotel if they couldn’t find us another room, and they then came up with the suggestion that they could ask one of our tour company’s drivers to swap with us. Luckily, one of them agreed and we were soon on our way up to a room on the second floor. We were soon in this room, and it was perfect, but this begs the question ‘why did the staff allocate this room on the second floor to the driver, when he will always be fit and of working age, and certainly more capable of climbing up and down a steep flight of stairs to go to bed, than most of the passengers on his coach?’. Maybe this should be a learning point for the staff, and that the room on the seventh floor should never be allocated to any coach passengers in the future. Anyway, let me tell you about this second room that we were allocated (now I wouldn’t state that all rooms are the same, as we know them not to be due to seeing our originally allocated room, and the room our friends were allocated – this is just how we found our room). The room itself was huge, with two Juliet balconies overlooking the town and canal, so not too bad a view, and certainly a much more pleasing and useable space than the original room. The bed was huge, with good quality bedding, and was comfortable meaning we both got a good night’s sleep throughout our stay (although we were close to the main road we never really heard traffic sounds, or any noise from the public, so a quiet space as far as we were concerned). The room had plenty of lights, including either side of the bed, but we found that, due to using very low powered bulbs, even in the main lights, it was quite dark in the room, even with all of the lights on (my suggestion would be to change the bulbs in the main lights to increase the lighting if and when required). There were plenty of power outlets around the room, including either side of the bed, but none had USB charging points, so it was lucky that I brought USB plugs with me (my suggestion would be to change the sockets either side of the bed to include USB points). There was enough storage space with a few coat hangers, but we could have done with more (I never asked for more, as we made do, but they really need to put more in the wardrobes to negate the need to ask for more if required). The room had easily controllable heating, and the room was comfortably warm throughout our stay. There was also a free digital safe in one of the wardrobes, which was quite large and easily housed our two 10” tablets and all our other valuables. There were most other things required to make the stay pleasant; coffee maker, kettle and brew kit and large flat screen TV (I took an Android box with me with an HDMI lead which I easily set up with the TV and connected into the free, quite fast WiFi, so we could stream ITVx etc. during our stay – God forbid the wife misses Emmerdale). The en-suite was large with a bath, separate shower cubicle and basin. The towels were a good size and were fairly soft and good quality, and there were small shower gels/shampoo and conditioner/soap which were replenished every day. The room was immaculate on our arrival, as was every area of the hotel, and it was kept that way by housekeeping throughout our stay, even on New Year’s Day. We had a separate small room with the toilet. We really couldn’t have been happier with this room, but maybe we should have been allocated it in the first place, and not have had the messing around we had on our arrival. All of the staff we encountered throughout the stay were welcoming and friendly, but at times they gave us the impression that they didn’t know what they were doing, and needed to be better managed. Here’s an example; we, as in myself and my wife, sat in the bar prior to dinner. We were the only ones in the bar at that time. The barmaid was messing around with something behind the bar, and it took ages for her to serve us. Then she found out that she didn’t have any ice, so shot off somewhere to get it. Then realised that the container with the lemon in was also empty so disappeared to do that. When she came back, even though we still didn’t have our drinks, she began a conversation with another staff member, who then took over serving us. Needless to say, it took some time to get served with this carry on. This wasn’t an isolated incident, but on the whole the staff did a very good job considering this hotel was full for the New Year celebrations. Now the meals. We were on a breakfast and dinner plan throughout our stay, which included a seven-course banquet for New Year’s Eve, but I’ll go into that separately. Breakfast was absolutely superb at each serving, and we couldn’t have wanted for more food from the breakfast buffet, all of which was beautifully prepared and presented. We left every day on our excursions feeling well fed and happy, and that we wouldn’t need to buy much for our lunch. Dinner was a three-course set menu, so pretty much a take it or leave it meal. However, saying that on our first dinner the main meal was salmon, and it became clear quite quickly that most of the 43 people in our party were not too happy with that. One of the tour staff spoke to the hotel staff and they agreed to change it to pork for anyone that wanted it. Now, I have a few things to say about that; firstly, considering that the hotel was full with another quite demanding coach party and other guests, this was quite an undertaking I would think for the chefs. Secondly, we were expecting a bit of pork with some veg, but when it arrived it looked the same as each and every evening meal throughout our stay – beautifully presented, lovely and hot and oh so tasty. Full marks to the kitchen staff for this. Finally, the New Year’s Eve Gala Dinner. This was to be the highlight of the trip, and to a great degree the hotel pulled it off really well. The dining room looked quite festive, but the tables were so tightly placed together that it was hard to get in and out, and also hard for the staff to serve us (we ended up passing plates of food from one end of the table to the other, and vice versa with the dirty plates). Now I’m not going to castigate the hotel too much for this, as we’ve been away quite a few times for events such as these, and it always seems the way for them to cram in as many people into a space as possible, obviously to make it worthwhile and make a profit. This hotel was no worse than others that we’ve celebrated in, so we made the best of it, and to be truthful passing things along wasn’t all that hard, and it became a bit of a joke, but getting out to do the loo was a bit of an inconvenience, and prior planning was indeed needed. Now, we had been promised live entertainment by our tour company, but this turned out to be a disco, which was quite a bit of a downer when you think that you might be getting a live band or singer. However, apart from the weird music that the DJ played during the dinner, the disco got us all up and dancing into the wee, small hours. The dinner was absolutely outstanding. Now this is a lot coming from me as I hate sea food, and one of the courses was a crayfish bisque and the very next course was sea bream, but then by that time I had already eaten two course that I had enjoyed, and there were another three courses that looked good – they were. As per usual, the food was all perfectly presented and was hot and tasty, so just a fabulous spread. Midnight came and everyone brought in the New Year together, followed by some champagne, coats on, and out to watch the fireworks. Now, my wife and I lived in Maastricht for four years in the early eighties, and we’d forgotten quite how much the Dutch enjoyed celebrating New Year, so it was a breath-taking experience watch fireworks go off in every direction for a long period of time – just superb. Then it was back in to dance and drink for a bit more before collapsing into bed after a fabulous night. So, I think the questions would be; did we enjoy our stay, and that would be a very sincere yes, and would we stay here again, and that would be an absolutely. Unfortunately, due to the few issues we encountered I’m going to have to take of one star in the overall score, but this still doesn’t detract from the fact that this hotel is a really pleasant place to stay for a few days.

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“Visit to Maastricht”

We stayed at this lovely hotel for 3 nights, enabling us to visit Maastricht for the André Rieu concert, beautiful position in a lovely area, nice town and surrounding areas, hotel, couldn’t do enough for you, I highly recommend a stay here. And the food was excellent.

“Comfortable Hotel”

Spent three nights here leading up to Andre Rieu’s concert in Maastricht. Very pleased with our room on the second floor and enjoyed the breakfast provided. Staff were very pleasant and helpful.