On a trip from Cologne to Northwest Germany in early October 2020, I was looking for an overnight in the Rheine / Osnabrück region with some basic parameters like hotel parking and 24 hour reception. The selection was comparably limited so that we finally ended up in Bad Bentheim, a city with a cute center and a beautiful castle. The hotel of our choice was the privately driven Hotel Grossfeld.

 

Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim – Location

Bad Bentheim is located between the Dutch city of Enschede and Rheine / Osnabrück in Germany. The hotel is located right in the city center – I was wondering if they even have rooms with castle view.  By that, the hotel offers great connections. The train station, which has been awarded to be the best one in Germany in 2019, is a bit too far away to travel with luggage, though. The connections to the A30 and A31 autobahn are excellent.

The area is very practical. There is a lovely bakery right across the road and a nice shopping road nearby. You can also enjoy the famous garden of the Bentheim castle after a short walk.

 

Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim – Suite

The prices at Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim were really competitive, so that we went for the suite room, which was 129 per night, flexible rate, including breakfast. The suite’s size was given with some 50 square meter, which is a realistic measure. The suite was located a the very end of the hotel – which required quite some walking including passages of few steps. In general that area of the hotel has direct connection to the rear entry of the restaurant, but due to Covid-19, this one was blocked (at least in breakfast times). Therefore, the room had very short connection to the spa and relax area.

Nice Room Layout

The suite itself was really nice. Even though the design was rather old fashioned, it was very functional. The first room you entered was the living room area, featuring a TV set, a large sofa with table and the work desk. The work desk was truly disappointing, squeezed into a corner of the room with a small table. At least the room featured a power plug there. The work desk table also featured some glasses and cutlery, which I had to remove to work. Due to the heavy walls around the desk, WiFi reception at that place was terrible and frequently lead to issues.

The living room and the sleeping area were connected through a hallway. As the whole hotel, the room was spotlessly clean and in very good state – the only exception was the heating in that hallway which has been full of marks. The sleeping room was large and felt a bit basic with the TV set placed on the thin minibar. You spot a ventilator in one of the pictures – if you wanted to use it, you either had to take out the power plug for the TV set, the minibar or the major lamb in the corner of the room – 1980’s and 1990’s architecture was just not made for nowadays power demands. The bad was great, though, and the sleeping area even featured a balcony. The suite, however, faced the least attractive views of the hotel, which has been a bit of disappointing. Only one side of the bed featured a power plug.

The sanitary rooms both connected to the hallway as well. The toilet was separate and did not feature an own sink. The bathroom with bathtub was very spacious. The state of the bathrooms was really lovely and felt like freshly renovated. There were no amenities, though – apart from soap / bath and shower gel.

Fire Escape Routing

You may feel I am picky, but since I did a flight safety training, I am quite sensitive on things like fire escape routings. The two pictures below were taken right from the hallway in front of my hotel. Especially on the right hand side, you see the escape sign before the door, but also the next sign in the rear (which is pointing to the right, reception area). I felt that the signage is strongly misleading, as (according to the escape plan) you had to turn left right after the doorway. If you head straight on, you more or less have to cross the whole building.

 

Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim – Breakfast / Food

The ground floor area of Hotel Grossfeld is amazing. Again, it may be a bit of traditional (in order to avoid repeating the wording old-fashioned), but it is very cozy and super-spacious. Thus, the hotel did not have any issues to comply with social distancing and could easily install one-way routes at breakfast buffet. The selection on the warm dishes and cereal side was maybe rather limited, but they had quite some juices, a nice selection of tea and were very strong in cold cuts, including multiple kinds of meat and cheese as well as smoked salmon – that’s just what likely a key share of their customers is demanding. Unfortunately, customers struggled to comply with hygienic rules partially.

The hotel offered a dinner buffet at our arrival. Unfortunately, we arrived too late. If there would have been some notification beforehand, we would definitely have made it – the smell of the food across the whole hotel was lovely.

 

Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim – Spa & Relax

Another really great fact about Hotel Grossfeld in Bad Bentheim are their great spa and relax facilities. I just had a short look into the beautful swimming pool area, which also included a sauna (closed during Covid-19), a steam bath and a solarium. This area was absolutely beautiful and definitely has a lot of potential for a relaxing start or finish of the day. In summer, they also seem to have an outdoor pool, which I did not spot during our stay.

What I even loved more was a lovely relax area right above the pool area. The room featured a few video game arcade machines, the Rolling Stones pinball machines, a major air hockey table and even pool. Games like air hockey or pinball required gaming coins, which you could receive at the reception for a very fair price. Sarah and I also really loved that the huge space had a table tennis table. Unfortunately, the area was also used to store tables and chairs (maybe overhead ones due to social distancing measures?). Unfortunately, whenever you missed a shot, you had to climb below the chair and tables – if you would have set up the furniture more sensibly, this definitely could have been eased.

 

Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim – Service

Overall, Hotel Grossfeld is a beautiful place – and I would absolutely recommend to stay there if you need a night in that region. However, some things were really strenuous. First of all, the WiFi lead to big issues. The reception and speed was great in other places like the restaurant, but the work desk in the room had hardly any connection. Furthermore, I absolutely disliked that the ports for e-mail sending and even for reception were blocked so that I had to use tethering for my mails.

Good Staff – with some Issues

The hotel check-in took quite long (as the staff had to do quite a lot in parallel) and did not feel fully welcoming. The more I liked the friendly and open-minded reaction of the managing family, when we discussed some issues during our stay at check-out. I feel that this is always the best basis to make the next stay even much better. Unfortunately, there were some other issues. I feel that welcome letters are a really nice gestures – the one of Hotel Grossfeld were in their two key languages, Dutch (left) and German (right, see first picture below). It was however a bit of strange that two different housekeeping maids signed that letter. I hated that the housekeeping entered our room at about 9:30, some 1 1/2 hour before check-out time, at our check-out day. There needs to be better communication between reception and staff to avoid it, especially during Covid-19.

Apart from that, the staff was really nice and we felt very welcoming. The parking situation in the hotel is odd, though. They had one parking lot right at the hotel, which they cannot use at full capacity due to organizational reasons. I had to use the major parking lot, which is more or less across Bentheim Market Square and thus a some three to four minute walk from reception. Luckily, there was no rain – otherwise, I would have been really angry.

 

Hotel Grossfeld Bad Bentheim – My View

Overall, the stay at Hotel Grossfeld was pretty solid. I had a really good feeling about the management, so that some of the issues might already be solved if you are around. Nevertheless, a hotel review is not a speculation about the future, but a description of a status of a past stay. During my October 2020 stay, the hotel was just not good enough to be at top rankings.

 

 

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