Braine-le-Comte Vacations from $739

Very nice room. My only issue: the TV channel lineup does not include BBC News. And the very generous breakfast buffet (€17) offers cold scrambled eggs and mediocre do-it-yourself coffee. Very “sympathique” staff, however.

The stay was pleasant, and the hotel, while simple, is well located and suited my needs. The breakfast was good. I believe the overall experience could be even better with an improvement in the quality of the bed linen, towels, and pillows.

First the good points…location was excellent; central and near to a metro station. Rooms were clean and bed comfortable. Breakfast decent. However, this place is more of a hostel than a hotel. No reception desk as such. The rooms are small and furnished with cheap and poorly fitted fixtures. ( one shelf was hanging off the wall and the headboard was missing). Little storage space. Only a badly fitted hanging rail placed directly above a coffee machine! Staff seemed inexperienced, and breakfast was a lottery to see which items were missing. Spoons one day, glasses the next, bowls the following. Same with food… getting items replaced was painfully slow! A lot of the crockery was chipped. Only used the room for shower, sleep and breakfast. So it suited our needs…just!

A lovely hotel but despite booking 5 months early the twin room we requested was unavailable. Also, the hotel was fully booked so we were sent to another of their properties across the road. It was serviced by very steep stairs - no lift and we were two flights up. We would not have been able to get our luggage up the steep narrow stairs if the reception guy hadn’t helped. Checking out was really difficult navigating our luggage down the stairs. We had breakfast included but only went the first day because we felt we could do better somewhere else and we saw the waiter using his hands to refill the hash browns and then eat directly from breakfast buffet (berries). I don't think we saw the best of the hotel.