Hotel Vitalquelle Montafon

The Hotel Vitalquelle Montafon is at Außerlitzstraße 80, in Schruns, in the Montafon, in Vorarlberg. The property website presents itself as a four-star superior wellness hotel and writes that Schruns station and the village centre are 900 metres away, ten minutes on foot, and the bus stop 110 metres; Booking reports the same address in the form Ausserlitzstraße 80, 6780 Schruns, gives it as four stars and measures 650 metres on foot from Tschagguns station. The house grew out of the former Gauenstein domestic science school, bought in 1998 and rebuilt, and the address of the Booking page still keeps that old name.

Children are admitted, and the property writes it itself. The website's FAQs answer the question with two sentences in a row: "Ja, Kinder sind ab jedem Alter willkommen; eine Kinderkarte für Hauptgerichte ist vorhanden. Der Spa-Bereich ist Gästen ab 14 Jahren vorbehalten". So the age is fourteen and it is the age for the Spa-Bereich, while for the stay there is no limit at all. Among the offers published by the website there are a Family Ferien Special and an Osterglück für Familien. Booking, in its Child policies block, confirms that children of all ages are welcome and adds that from the age of fifteen they pay the adult rate, with a cot always available in the zero-to-two band and a surcharge per night; it lists no extra beds. In neither reading of the Booking page does the highlighted services block carry the Adults only mark.

The wellness area measures 700 square metres and the property also calls it Naturwellness across 5,100 square metres, counting the garden. The sauna department, which the website calls Val-Castiel, is open every day from 14 to 19 and has five rooms listed one by one: the Dampfkesselbad, that is, the steam bath, the Kristallsauna, the Sanarium, also called the soft sauna, the Infrarotstube and the Zirbenhaus-Ruheraum, which is the relaxation room in Swiss pine and not a sauna. The rule on swimwear is not declared on any page of the website, and it is not to be deduced.

Water is the part the property describes without ever writing an age. The panoramic indoor pool measures 15 by 7 metres, is at 29 degrees, is open every day from 7 to 19 and, the FAQs write, is free for hotel guests; it has a whirlpool bench, a waterfall, counter-current swimming and massage jets. Outside there are the natural bathing pond of 1,100 square metres with the lakeside bar and the wellness garden of 4,000 square metres, which the website gives as an addition to the offer above all in the warm season. Here one thing has to be said that the source does not say: the FAQs reserve the Spa-Bereich from the age of fourteen and, on the same page, answer about the indoor pool, the pond and the garden without naming any age, but nowhere do they write where the Spa-Bereich ends and the rest begins. Anyone travelling with children under fourteen would do well to ask the property, before booking, whether the indoor pool falls inside the reserved part.

The treatments are massages, peelings and wraps, facial treatments, beauty extras and waxing, and they can be booked when the room is booked. The gym, which the website calls the Vitalquelle Gym, has two cycle ergometers, a treadmill, a cross trainer, cardio equipment and dumbbells. The Day Spa is open to outside guests too, by reservation.

Outside the wellness area, the property's FAQs list free wifi in every room, fifty free parking spaces on the hotel's own ground, two type 2 charging stations for electric cars at 22 kW, for a charge and with the cable to be brought by the guest, the lift, check-in from 15 with the chance to arrive as early as 13 for the vital buffet, and check-out by 11. The hotel is not barrier-free, and it writes so: it calls itself barrierefreundlich and invites guests to call before booking. In the kitchen the head chef Damir Srsa has been in charge for twenty-four years and is awarded two forks by the Falstaff guide; the vital three-quarter board includes the breakfast buffet, the afternoon vital buffet and a six-course menu with choices in the evening, with vegetarian dishes every day and vegan ones on request for a surcharge. In summer the hotel hires out electric bicycles, in winter it runs guests to the lifts with its own free shuttle, with three departures in the morning and two pick-ups in the afternoon, by reservation at reception. Dogs are not allowed, and the property writes so: "Nein, Hunde sind in der Vitalquelle Montafon nicht erlaubt". Booking adds two pools, the wellness centre, the steam bath, non-smoking rooms, the gym, two restaurants, room service, the bar, the garden, the terrace, a safe and a flat-screen television, and writes that every room has a balcony, as the website confirms, with a view of the mountains of the Montafon.