Van der Valk Hotel ARA

Quiet hotel. Had a large room with a bathtub big enough for comfortable relaxing time. Great breakfast and restaurant for dinner. Beautiful seating area outside for sunny days. Few good choices in the bar if you prefer Belgian beers. For dinner I tried many different dishes. Cold cuts was amazing with too big porsion, but some other dishes was just ok and little bit expensive to be fair. There wasn't a fridge in my room, so plan for that. Very friendly staff, both in restaurant, bar and reception.

Average old hotel with a perfect restaurant, although there is one asian guy in the restaurant who really needs to practice being friendly with people. He was really rude. This hotel is dog friendly so you’ll hear a lot of barking in the restaurant and while you’re in your room sleeping. There are no cameras in the corridors so not that secure. For couples, they don’t have twin sized beds or blankets, only two single beds attached with two single blankets which was a downside of our room. They need to put a “keep quiet” sign in the corridors. You’ll never have a good quality sleep as you hear everyone talking loudly in the hallway. The best thing about this hotel is their restaurant and buffet. Overall we won’t be coming back.

We've had a very disappointing experience here, we don't recommend it to anyone! The rooms don't have a minibar to store any cold drinks. There are no Nespresso coffee machines in the room like in all Van der Valk hotels we've been to so far, instead you get a water boiler + 3in1 powder coffee?? I could get over this if the coffee machines in the lobby could have been used instead. But surprise, the machines were literally closed for hotel guests!!! And there was a sign that they are exclusively for conferences being held there. What a service! So if you want a cappuccino, you need to pay €3.60 in the restaurant for it. The room (garden view with balcony) isn't really what you pay for: that is not a garden, it's just a field in the middle of nowhere, no flowers or anything that resembles a garden. Van der Valk in Heerlen has a really beautiful garden, those you can actually call "garden view" rooms. These ones at hotel Ara are not, as there isn't any garden to be found so again, misleading advertising. The photos on their website show a bathtub in each room, however at the hotel you can get a room with a very small shower instead. At the reception, they were very nice and let us switch rooms for a bathtub one but this one had many issues unfortunately. The bathroom has a bathtub that you can't properly fill up because it's missing a faucet. You have to use the shower head to fill the bathtub with water(see photo) and this takes ages! Not relaxing at all having to wait an hour for this and when it is finally filled up, the water level keeps decreasing because there is some crack in the tub so again, you can't actually take a proper bath. The bathroom is also missing any make up mirrors, you have to ask for it at the reception. The cherry on top: the swimming pool! The smell in there was impossible to bear, really disgusting sewage smell. The water was not clean at all, there was just an unbearable smell. We couldn't stay more than 15 minutes in that pool, no maintenance whatsoever. There should really be a health inspection there. The only 2 positive things were the friendliness of the staff and the good breakfast. Further than this, it was an unpleasant experience which we won't repeat. I am very surprised how this hotel is connected to the Van der Valk name, we've been to many Van der Valk hotels and we've never had such a bad experience like this time. It completely ruined our holiday.