Normally, the professional testers of the ranking of the 101 best hotels in Germany are more critical than the guests of the respective houses – this has been the case for years. Only at the Bayerischer Hof in Munich are the guests themselves the biggest critics. With them, the house only just made it into the top 200 in the current ranking.
Once again to understand: The ranking, communicated annually by the Institute for Service Excellence in partnership with the Handelsblatt, is based on three pillars: Pillar one is guest feedback, consolidated from open and closed user groups, including the portals of Booking and Tripadvisor. Pillar two relies on international rankings such as those from Forbes,balance sheet and Hornstein, which in turn consolidate the leading gastro reviews. Pillar three consists of the personal experiences of the 101 profit testers. All three pillars are equally weighted at 33.3 percent.
The significantly poorer guest feedback on the Bayerischer Hof compared to the best hotels pulls down the overall result, which, through an arithmetic mean of the two professors Annegret Wittmann-Wurzer and Peter Thuy from the International University (IU) in Munich, the feedback from the different channels as objectively as possible reflects.
So I made my own way to the Bayerischer Hof and want to know how it can be explained that the house is not in the top places where it sees itself.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
I recently received an e-mail in which the head of PR wrote to me that managing director Innegrit Volkhardt was “sad, disappointed and upset” whenever she dealt with her result in the 101 hotels ranking.
Family-owned in the fifth generation
I park around the corner and walk to Promenadeplatz, as I want to check in as unnoticed as possible. The traditional hotel has been here since 1841; it has been in the family for five generations.
In front of the door, I am amazed: there is no doorman to greet the guests. That’s not enough for a grand hotel of the “Leading Hotels of the World”. Personally, my research is clouded when I am recognized at check-in by an employee who saw me at a lecture a few years ago and of course he communicated this to everyone in the house.
This will not change my rating. I remember a dialogue with my good friend, the three-star chef Thomas Bühner. I once asked him how he reacts in the kitchen when the Michelin tester is recognized. “I can’t change anything anymore,” said Bühner, “the car is in the garage. The engine is the engine. The paint is the paint. The tires are the tires. I might be able to wipe the panes again, but in the end it won’t change the result.”
The tester did not go unnoticed, but strangely enough, his name was never addressed anywhere in the hotel.
(Photo: Benjamin Monn)
Curiously, no one in the hotel addresses me by name from now on, apart from the caring and caring concierge. Instead, I am repeatedly asked for my room number.
Beforehand, in order to remain anonymous, I had asked a friend to call the hotel and reserve a table for dinner. A friendly lady explained to him that only two of the restaurants were open due to the winter and then put him through to the Blue Spa Lounge. Surprise: The employee there asks in all seriousness that it is better to reserve the table via the website instead of accepting the reservation.
That’s not good service; in addition, of course, one or the other guest gets lost. The one-stop-shop procedure has been taken for granted in the hotel industry since the 1980s – the reference to the homepage is the opposite of service excellence.
I was not offered rooming, i.e. escort to the room, explanation of the room and the services of the hotel. On the way to the room, I notice: the corridors are all neat, bright, basically clean and stylishly decorated. My room itself is luxuriously renovated. As a welcome, the television shows my name without a salutation: “Guten Tag Rath”. A curtain has been torn out at one point at the top. But these are small things.
I’m in the Blue Spa, which extends over three floors and was designed by French interior designer Andrée Putman. In passing, I look into the fitness center designed by Hollywood star bodybuilder Ralf Möller: It is clean, modern and functional with the latest luxury equipment and offers a magnificent view of Munich.
There are a few flaws at the acclaimed Blue Spa.
(Photo: Carsten K. Rath)
Munich society meets in the Blue Spa in summer, now in winter it’s just really crowded. And service: none. Two women are busy with themselves and the fire in the fireplace – I don’t get noticed. Comparable spas in this class usually offer water or tea, for example. And even if it’s just a little small talk: that’s part of it.
The elegant Falk’s Bar is optically one of the most beautiful hotel bars in Munich, oh what – in Germany. In the listed ambience of the Hall of Mirrors with stuccoed ceilings there is no trace of the gloom of many a bar. However, I don’t really feel good.
A good bar is also characterized by the fact that solo travelers are involved in small talk by the bartender. No sign of it. Instead, the bartender casually drinks a cola in front of all the guests. Maybe I’m thinking a bit old school, but something like that would have been unthinkable when I was a waiter. According to the old hotel school, the waiter has to leave the bar area to drink.
A highlight in terms of hardware – but the service lacks excellence and cordiality.
(Photo: Benjamin Monn)
Now I’m looking forward to dinner and I’m looking for the elevator first. Even after checking several times, I can’t find any signage in the long corridors. The bouillabaisse in the Blue Spa restaurant is not classic, but it is excellently prepared with a wonderful fish stock. The main course, the veal fillet, also tastes delicious. The kitchen performance convinced me.
The organizing hand is missing at breakfast
The next morning I’m sitting at breakfast at eight in the morning. The large room offers a wonderful panoramic view of the magnificent Frauenkirche. The buffet is presented very nicely, I don’t miss anything at first glance.
The tables are also well set. I register more employees than guests. But somehow the organizing hand is missing, the head waiter. Nobody asks me, for example, if I would like an egg dish, but they do ask me the room number first at the door. I am not accompanied to the table. Waiters stand together in small clusters, talking to each other.
Then the head waiter appears, struts past the buffet with his hands locked behind his back, then checks his mobile phone. Neither the employees nor the guests are greeted by him – and later he does not say goodbye either. The job of this manager is not clear to me.
In such moments, the subtle difference between a good hotel like the Bayerischer Hof (booking rating: 8.0) and the best of the best becomes apparent: in the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz in Switzerland, for example (9.2), in the Sacher in Vienna (9.4) or in the Hamburger Vier Jahreszeiten (9.4) I would of course have been greeted by name long ago and asked about my wishes and my well-being. Being offered daily newspapers is also part of it.
Most of the rooms in the Bayerischer Hof have been very well renovated.
(Photo: Roland Bauer)
And the competition in Munich is by no means asleep: Behind the Bayerischer Hof, the new Rosewood is being built in a fantastic building at great expense by the Schörghuber Group, which could completely shake up the Munich hotel scene from 2024.
My conclusion: The Bayerischer Hof is a well-run establishment. In the areas that I was able to get to know, it has been extensively renovated and reflects the charm of Bavaria. The house is neither great nor as bad as some comments on Tripadvisor or Booking.com make it out to be. I found weaknesses in the spa, which was highly praised but, in my opinion, was too small for the number of rooms and guests – and in the warmth of the employees, which I actually hardly understood in the house.
And: Apparently the Bayerischer Hof is a hotel where the guests are treated very differently. In any case, the wide range of online criticism suggests so. In our business, we are only ever as good as the last meal we served. That’s why the unvarnished truth, that of the guests’ feelings, cannot be wiped away.
And when I then compare the top group of Munich hotels at the end of my test visit, the different flight levels are very clear: The Bayerischer Hof is currently only third in my personal rating after the Mandarin Oriental and The Charles. What remains is the necessary focus on each individual guest and, in part, the change in the attitude of individual employees.
From 2024, the new Rosewood Hotel will probably be the measure of all things in Munich.
(Photo: Carsten K. Rath)
When I checked out, I found out that the hotel manager, Innegrit Volkhardt, had my room costs removed from the bill. I always pay the bills myself in my tests, and I asked for it here too. It wasn’t allowed. I mention this for the sake of transparency – of course, this did not affect my test result in any way.
Plus: Luxuriously renovated rooms, centrally located in the heart of Munich. Minus: Lack of service excellence, the whole house is overheated (note from a member of staff: “We turn off the air conditioning in winter”).
Rath’s Voyage Rating (current rating in bold):
1. Explicit Travel Warning
2. Better than under the bridge
3. So-so, not oh, là, là
4. Complaining at a high level
5. If only it were always like this
6. Great cinema
Insider tips:
Jogging: My favorite route leads from the hotel to the nearby Isar. It doesn’t matter whether it’s up or down the river: a great natural running route.
Best Restaurant: With the “Jan” in the Museumsquartier, Jan Hartwig opened his eagerly awaited restaurant last October and has maintained his three-star level from day one. In the kitchen focus: sustainable producers of the highest product quality from the region.
Best Asian: The “Matsuhisa” on the first floor of the Mandarin Oriental Munich, named after the internationally acclaimed Japanese celebrity chef Nobuyuki (“Nobu”) Matsuhisa. The only German Matsuhisa is famous for its Japanese-Peruvian cuisine.
About the author: As a former grand hotelier and operator of the Travelgrand.ch travel platform, Carsten K. Rath is a professional globetrotter. He travels to all the hotels he writes about for the Handelsblatt on his own account. Rath is the brain behind the ranking “The 101 best hotels in Germany”, whose partners include the Handelsblatt.
Carsten K. Rath, Michael Raschke: The 101 best hotels in Germany 2022/23.
Institute for Service and Leadership Excellence AG/Handelsblatt
594 pages
39.90 euros
ISBN: 978-3033094574
Rath is also the author of the book on the ranking, co-authored by Michael Raschke (Handelsblatt). The book can be ordered here and by e-mail: [email protected]
More: This is what makes the 101 best hotels in Germany so successful