Macdonald Aviemore Hotel

We visited the Macdonald Highlands Resort for 7 nights This was a particularly special and important holiday as my father having accelerated poor health and my son celebrating his 6th Birthday. What I can say is the resort is ALL staff were consistently fantastic helping in every way from ensuring my dad could get around, carrying up his heavy oxygen bottles to the room even after saying I was happy to do on my own and then singing happy birthday to my son along with the pianist on the final night playing the theme effortlessly. The rooms in the Highland Hotel and its communal areas were all of a high standard including the comfy beds, bedding, towels and tea making facilities. The leisure facilities were impressive too with lots to do for all ages from arts & crafts to the swimming and gym areas. The additional facilities that incur a cost to enjoy such as ice skating & cinema were excellent and with the Macdonald resort 30% off codes about 1/3 of the price vs doing these in our local home city! Evening entertainment again was great with a pianist for 6 of the 7 nights and kids entertaining at the adjacent hotel every night which was far better than most as it was not just playing music but interactive, fun and with lots of small prizes to be won. We loved the local area of Aviemore enjoying local shops, having haircut, coffee shops and other guests told us the local eateries such as the curry house was one of the best they have ever been to. There was one area where they did let themselves down and this was the main Aspects restaurant. We were on a 7-night DB&B package which financially was good value, but the menu was fairly limited and never changed for the entire break. We did get around this by using the Italian but due to fathers’ mobility this created a bit more of a challenge. Additionally, breakfast was served in the same restaurant and during the stay, they ran out of rather basic things like porridge, beans and croissants. Although not a deal breaker it did feel that a resort of this size should not be running out of items especially ones that have long life dates to them considering there were 3 supermarkets less than 500 metres from the resort. We would definitely visit again and highly recommend but would opt out of the dinner part of the package.

Stayed for three nights, as it was our 10 year anniversary. The room they gave us was room was 3011 in the Aviemore hotel, which had just been painted that morning, dust sheets left outside the window. The toxic paint fumes were unbearable. Asked duty manager to check, he stayed, for less than 10 seconds as he couldn't bare the fumes. He informed us that he would try and sort the problem out. We Stayed in the room with the window open for a further 40 minutes. We went to the reception where we were shocked to find out nothing was happening. We informed another duty manager of our situation, he immediately called his manager who put us in the Highland hotel, Sam the duty manager of that hotel informed us that the room we were in had just been painted that morning!!, and was sorry for any inconvenience. We were informed that we would be staying at the Highland for the rest of our stay. Next morning we were contacted by Aiden who informed us that we would be moving again into an adapted room for our daughter. He stated that the room would be cleaned and ready in the hour, two hours later and packed the room was still not ready, so from 10am in the morning and several stressed phone calls later, day ruined, we finally got into the room at 5pm. We unpacked and tried to make the best of the rest of Saturday. Sunday we went out for the day, I placed the room service card on the door handle, as the room needed cleaning especially the disabled toilet and the shower seat, also needed new towels and tea condiments. We arrived back to our room, we were horrified and shocked at the condition the room had been left in, who ever came into our room only changed two towels, no cleaning had been done, no beds made or changed, no clean cups or tea condiments left, disabled toilet not cleaned, immediately informed the same duty manager about state of room, he informed me that room service had gone, he informed me that he would note our complaint, and we would have to stay in the room as it was!! I informed him that if the duty manager did not come to speak with me, I would go and get the queen size quilt and myself and my daughter who is in a wheelchair would camp out at reception. He made a call and the duty manager a man called Ryan came five minutes later and spoke to me. He apologised and was deeply concerned about the ongoing issue apon issues that we were having. He stated that this would be brought to the attention of the owner Jacob, he also assured me that I would be receiving a telephone call the next day, this never happened!! We are still waiting!! This was over a week ago. Ryan changed the bedding and the towels as well as giving us condiments, he in my opinion was the only person as a manager who helped us!!

When in the restaurant I was horrified to see one of the chefs picking his nose and then wiping it on his jacket. Disgusting. Was safe to say we had all lost our appetite and left. I believe his name was John from what I could hear from other staff members saying. No wonder the reviews for this place are terrible with such an amateur chef in the kitchen. We will not be returning.

Festive weekend. Unfortunately our stay was very very poor. Our room in the highland hotel (room 222) was awful the bathroom was dirty, we ended up with food poisoning 3 out of 4 of us. We had only eaten in the hotel for 3.5 days. The Xmas set up wasn’t the best it was lacking in every area. The food was below par. The hotel looked tired. I spoke to a manager who was going to contact me a few days later, weeks down the line I still haven’t heard anything at all. Extremely poor customer service. Despite us trying to make it fun for our children and them appearing to enjoy themselves, we won’t be back. Huge waste of money.

We’re currently staying at the Highlands hotel. It’s got HUGE potential but is letting itself down in all directions. It’s been disappointing from the start, and no-one seems to want to make a difference to the experience we’re having. We were told at check in that a manager would be contacting us to discuss our situation and discuss their lack of communication but after our second night this hasn’t happened yet. Disabled access and accessibility doesn’t seem to have been considered from any aspect especially safety which is frankly very worrying. There’s a sad lack of love for the place which as a resort with bags of potential just seems such a waste. The pool area is so dirty and grubby the areas around the pool look like they haven’t been cleaned in a long time. A couple of members of staff have stood out, but the majority seems to have a lack of training and a lack of understanding about basic customer service, recognising and being responsive to customer needs. Frankly we have been left feeling like an inconvenience and there are a number of issues that are entirely out of our control (ie not being given what we booked and then the new options being far from adequate) and it’s reached the point where it’s embarrassing and tiring to feel like you’re complaining about things that we just shouldn’t have to be complaining about if people had done what they were supposed to in the first place. Staff training in hospitality needs serious investment.