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Over the summer, my wife and I spent some time in Salzburg during the opening weekend of the six-week annual music festival, Salzburger Festspiele. Salzburg is packed to the gills during festival weekends and hotels can be extremely expensive. A few months before we left, we discovered that the well-reviewed Sheraton Grand was less than 40,000 points/night, cheap enough to burn three of our Marriott Free Night Certificates at. It ended up being one of our favorite hotels of the trip.
Sheraton Grand Salzburg Bottom Line Review
We really enjoyed the Sheraton Grand Salzburg. It has a marvelous location across from Mirabell Gardens, right in the middle of central Salzburg, a short walk to the train station and all of the main tourist attractions of the city. The location on a side street makes it feel quieter and more tucked-away. Service is very good across the board, the rooms are bright and feel more open than their size because of the green space outside. Excellent value. Thumb’s Up
- Price: Our stay averaged 39,000 points/night. We used one 40k Marriott Free Night Certificate and two 35k certificates, as well as 5k Bonvoy points to top-up the 35k certs. The cash price was ~$630/night. Looking now, it appears that some rooms are as much as 60,000 points/night next summer.
- Value: As an award, it’s a terrific value. We managed to use three free night certificates when the cash price was over $600 per night. If using points, it would have been ~1.7 cents per point, well above our Reasonable Redemption Value for Marriott points of .80 cents each.
- Location: Hard to get much better. Mirabell Gardens (of Sound of Music fame) is directly across the street, the river is a few blocks away and it’s about an 8-10 minute walk from the train station and the Altstadt. Even though it’s in a busy part of town, the hotel is located down a side street that keeps it tucked away from the tourist crush.
- Room: We booked a classic room with one king and were proactively upgraded to a 323sq ft King Terrace Room with a balcony and a “park view.” We loved the balcony; it made the room feel spacious and airy and was an excellent place to enjoy some evening nightcaps and morning coffee.
- Parking: Valet parking is €29/night.
- Resort/Destination Fee: None.
- Internet: Excellent, able to stream throughout the hotel.
- Service: Good, overall. Check-in was especially noteworthy with an extremely helpful agent that talked us through the entire property, our elite benefits, got a couple minis of chocolate liqueur and gave us some great local recommendations. Housekeeping was very efficient, not only cleaning but also tidying up and organizing.
- Turndown service: Nightly.
- Dining:
- Restaurant Mirabell: Located on the first floor, behind the piano bar and with a terrific, leafy patio. The daily breakfast buffet is served here and then, in the evening, it turns into an Austrian-themed restaurant. Breakfast is served from 6:30am-10:30am daily; dinner is 6:00pm-9:30pm. There is a weekend brunch from 12-2:30pm on Sundays.
- taste.it: Weekday lunch-only restaurant. Serves a €14 two-course lunch special with drink and an a la carte menu as well. Open Monday-Friday from 11:30am-2:30pm.
- Piano Bar: At the front of Restaurant Mirabell, it functions as a Viennese-style coffee house with the usual list of Austrian espresso drinks, then turns into more of a lounge in the afternoon and evening, with live music. Open for drinks and snacks daily from 8:00am-1am.
- Spa: There is a steam room and sauna connected to the fitness area that includes a “relaxation room” with loungers. Massages can be arranged in the in-house massage room.
- Fitness Room: Located on the first floor. It’s a mediocre part of the hotel: small, stuffy and doesn’t have much in the way of either cardio or weight equipment.
- Marriott Titanium Benefits:
- Room Upgrade: We booked a standard room and were upgraded to a ~323 sq ft King Terrace Room, with a park-view balcony (suites were sold out during our stay). The room was bright, leafy and lovely.
- Free Breakfast: Served daily at Restaurant Mirabell. It’s a good (if not great) breakfast buffet supplemented by made-to-order egg dishes, waffles and pancakes. The breakfast includes wine service, kombucha and espresso drinks.
- Club Lounge: There are, strangely enough, two club lounges that vary drastically in quality. There’s one on the first floor for Platinum and Titanium members that’s not much larger than a guest room. It’s stuffy, doesn’t have much food selection is nowhere most folks would like to hang-out (they seemed fine with folks taking drinks out, however). The other lounge, Etage7, is spacious and stunning. It’s on the top floor, with beautiful views of Salzburg, and has an excellent selection of food and drinks. This lounge is reserved for Ambassador members and suite guests only. Our room was listed as having Etage7 access, but the concierge said that, since it was an upgrade, we couldn’t use it.
- Late Checkout: We were proactively given a 4pm checkout.
- Welcome Amenity: A fruit bowl was waiting for us in the room when we arrived. When we checked in, the front desk agent also gave two mini-bottles of the Mozart Chocolate Liqueur that you see all around Salzburg.
- Would I stay again? Absolutely. The location is great and, outside of the fitness area, the hotel is a pleasure to stay in.
Pros
- Good service
- Bright, airy rooms, many of which have a park view
- Feels much more elegant than US Sheraton properties
- Has a terrific location in Salzburg
- Breakfast is good with a variety of options
Cons
- Subpar fitness area
- No pool
- Tiny, unattractive Platinum/Titanium club lounge
Image Gallery
Sheraton Grand Salzburg King Terrace Room
Restaurants
Restaurant Mirabell (breakfast)
taste.it
Piano Bar
Sheraton Grand Salzburg Club Lounges
Platinum and Titanium
Etage 7
Sheraton Grand Salzburg Fitness Room and Relaxation Area
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Agreed! Just returned from Austria and were really impressed with the staff… particularly the F&B staff at both breakfast and the Piano Bar. We had two rooms at 121k points for 3 nights. Also used 3 Suite Night Awards. This gave us a Sky Suite with a view of the fortress, and the second room upgraded to a junior suite. We however were granted access to the ETAGE Lounge. Part of the reason why we enjoyed Salzburg so much is because of the Sheraton Grand Salzburg.
It looks like the hotel wanted to nerf their lounge benefit and created a fake lounge to keep people out of the real one.
I really enjoy visits to Austria, Germany and most of western Europe. If I was younger I would try to get a job (through a US company) for a few years there.
I’m not a pool or fitness person on the road. We usually walk many miles so that makes up for not exercising and I’d rather not have to bring workout clothes.
I’m hoping my health is good enough to make at least one more trip to Europe.
Enjoy.
Nice review. I know little about the marriott program but am tempted to sign up for the 5x free 50k nights credit card offer listed. I see it’s *possible* to get excellent value out of these certs, but how hard it is in practice? Tons of my searches shows 70k nights worth $200-$250 USD. No thanks.
Been here and it was an amazing property, but the lounge really made it. That they had to nerf that benefit is really too bad. Probably a symptom of allowing platinum with just a credit card these days. If everyone is special no one is.
We stayed here last year for three nights. First night was in a suite upgraded from Titanium status, our daughters were in a regular room. The 2nd and 3rd night we used suite upgrades and was on the 7th floor with views. Location was fabulous, service was great, but the lounge was the best. We stayed probably 2 hours one day talking, eating, drinking on the lounge balcony overlooking the park. A very unique thing about Etage7 is they stock one of every kind of red bull drink. It was a very memorable experience at the hotel and worth the points we used.
I stayed there several years ago (2019) and too was very pleased. I received not much of an upgrade at the time as a titanium — certainly nothing like you received.
The lounge situation clearly has changed since I was there. It appears that the two lounge situation is relatively new— there was one lounge when I was there … the one upstairs and it was very nice. You had to take breakfast there though unless you chose breakfast as your elite checkin benefit — which would have been silly for me traveling alone. Now maybe I was there at a slower time of the year when one lounge sufficed.
What was your trip itinerary? Saw you were in Vienna. Looking to do this trip next April and have 2 50K certs. Thanks for the review!