Hotel Kobenzl by Jamie Dunford Wood

The Hotel Kobenzl is a wonderfully positioned hotel in the mountains way above Salzburg may not be everybody's cup of tea. Decorwise it can be eccentric, with table mounted water features in the cosy sitting room/bar, various country craft ornaments like straw dolls dotted around the place, and wood-chip papered walls in some of the rooms reminiscent of an english bed and breakfast. The building, too, is a somewhat ramshackle combination of a 19thC Alpine farmhouse and a more recent 40s construction (albeit in keeping), and the elderly guests mixed with the odd rambunctious child (they encourage children) might ring warning bells for others.

However, it has this going for it: while not overly luxurious, it is deeply comfortable and relaxing; there is a family atmosphere about the delightful staff, the result of years in the same private hands (an Austrian Baroness); it has extensive grounds for hiking; the spa facilities are impressive, and cater for all tastes, from new age crystal and light therapy to steam baths and aromatherapy; and the views over the town and surrounding mountains from the terrace, the pool, and the front facing rooms are spectacular. It is also completely unpretentious, something often missing from hotels with so much to offer.

The 40 rooms, including 12 suites, are furnished in a light baroque/rococo style, and all of the rooms to the front have little sit out balconies, floored in green baize-like material. Bathrooms are small but adequate, either in grey marble or tiled. All rooms are of a decent size, the deluxes very decent, with furnished sitting areas and lowish ceilings and little dinky chandeliers, so if you're over 6ft you'll need to swerve to avoid them. The cream, and sometimes colour-washed, walls are hung with local oils of flowers and other innocuous pictures - not ones you'd necessarily want to take home, you understand, but totally in keeping with the spirit of the place. The standard rooms face the hills behind and overlook the car park, and have no balconies. In the spa there are all sorts of inviting looking rooms for all sorts of treatments, including one with a deep bath and a rococo bed for collapsing onto afterwards. For those who know Sharrow Bay in the Lake District of England, this hotel has a similar feel of somewhere personally loved by the owner and with their individual stamp. They should be twinned.