Atholl Palace Hotel

Atholl palace stay

Nice hotel, with very overpriced drinks in the bar.

Beautiful setting and impressive building

The Atholl Palace is in a beautiful setting and it's an impressive building. The downstairs rooms, including lounge area and bar are very nice, with comfy sofas and lovely wood fires in the lounge area. The service and quality of the food in the restaurants was good though they seemed short staffed. it is an easy wall through the lovely grounds into Pitlochry.
The bedrooms themselves were a disappointment. The rooms needed to be refurbished as the decor looks very tired, the room was overly warm, with no way to regulate the temperature or provide any ventilation. In the morning it was very noisy outside the bedroom from about 7.45/8am as we later found out that some of the management team seemed to be having a meeting in the corridor. This woke us up.
I am unsure if I would stay again.

Fantastic location and building, good service but nickel-and-dimed in the restaurant

We spent the period between Christmas and the New Year at Atholl Palace buying a half-board options through Country Hotel Breaks. We've now had several stays with Country Hotel Breaks so a lot of the comments will be relative to the other hotels we've stayed in.

Firstly the location and building can't be faulted. Yes, it's clear that rooms and wings of the hotel are reserved for when they host larger hospitality events, but it fault extremely well maintained and a spectacular backdrop. The grounds are amazing and the short walk to the Black Spout waterfall is recommended to all that stay there.

Staff were friendly and helpful and the rooms comfortable and well appointed. My major beef, excuse the pun, is with the restaurant. We had 70 a night allowance for dinner for two and this proved woefully inadequate on every occasion.

Everything from the near 5 supplement for Haggis Fritters starters (four the size of large marbles) despite their being huge amounts of haggis available on a buffet basis at breakfast, to the 20 surcharge for a 8 oz steak. Portion sizes were that of haute cuisine, without the quality of the food being of haute cuisine standard. This resulted in needing at least two-to-three supplemental proportions of chargeable side orders to stop us having to gnaw at our own limbs later in the evening due to hunger. I guess I've just been spoilt by the quality of the other half-board venues we'd stayed at through Country Hotel Breaks. At the end of the day we spent nearly 1,000 for a three night stay, do I think we got value for money? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I go back? No. Would I have paid 1,200 if the food was better proportioned and the port we ordered only been about 25ml? Yes.