Mount Lofty House & Estate Adelaide Hills - Adults Retreat - Enjoy 21 Complimentary Inclusions

Fabulous!

Coffee

Beautiful views and amazing service! Really wish we stayed longer. Amazing service overall, food was great and the staff would always greet you with a smile and be at your service. From the moment we arrived until the day we left, everything went well - really recommend Mount Lofty House!

My husband and I received top class service from all of the staff at Mount Lofty House during our stay. We chose the hotel to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary in style. The view from our room was incredible which looked over the beautiful Piccadilly Valley. Everything was perfect. Thank you so much to all the staff that helped us create a wonderful memory to cherish forever. 💛

Had a lovely 2 night stay and cocktail party at the Coach House to celebrate my 70th birthday. The staff, Fraser, Fletcher, Sam and Sophie were really excellent, friendly, attentive, professional, engaging. A great team. Chris at Reception was also most accommodating and friendly. Olivia who organised my function was also great. All in all a great relaxing 2 days.

Pro’s: Mountain Lofty House is truly a stunning place. A perfect getaway. Our room was beautifully appointed. The bed - just heaven. The “History Tour” by Christopher is a MUST DO. We loved his knowledge and enthusiasm in sharing it with us. Hardy’s Verandah: absolutely outstanding. Wonderful service by Pietro and Maxime who are obviously very passionate about their craft. Menu is breathtaking. Cons: Just one… Martha’s for dinner. Food is excellent. Service definitely started out well but as it clearly became a busy evening, the staff really dropped the ball on service. So a bit disappointing. Overall, if you are visiting Adelaide, definitely put Mount Lofty on your list.

This is a difficult review, so we want to provide details. If you are looking for a secluded off grid kind of stay and have your own car to get down and up the hills, then Mount Lofty House could be ideal. But in our case, we were visiting Adelaide for the first time, wanted to explore the CBD and different parts of Adelaide and didn’t have our own transport, then Mount Lofty isn’t a good place to stay at. Let’s start with the good. The property’s location is quite far up on Adelaide Hills, so it’s beautiful setting and surrounded by green views wherever you look. It’s a good retreat location if you want to be away from the city. The staff at the reception of Mount Lofty House were exceptional, always helpful and very accommodating. Now to the part that will not make us return to Mount Lofty. First, it’s location is also its weak point, unless you have your own transportation. You can get an Uber down into CBD and back up, but each ride will cost you around $AUD 50-60. If you want to travel within the Mount Lofty area, it gets very difficult. We managed to get an Uber to Cleland Widlife Park. But despite so many tries and waiting for more than 30 minutes, no Uber wanted to go all the way up just to pick us back to Mount Lofty House. In the end we had to call a taxi company who charged us $AUD 55 for a 10 minutes ride. For the same reason, forget Uber Eats, it’s almost impossible to get any food deliveries. This meant your food choices is limited to what’s offered in Mount Lofty restaurants and bar. That’s the next weak point. Breakfast was dissapointing. No buffet and limited ala-carte choices where you can order one starters and one mains only. Ok perhaps for 2-3 days stay but the food gets boring and repeatitive after that. What made it worse, the only meat offered was pork/bacon. No chicken, no salmon (or any seafood), no beef. Basically if you don’t take pork, you’re left with only vegetarian option. Never heard of any 5 star hotels with such limited choices. This is not acceptable especially since lunch and dinner in the restaurants had all these choices. It is a self-imposed limitation for breakfast that almost made it feel pretentious. When we brought this up to the breakfast manager on the very first day, instead of finding ways to cater to our preferences (which almost all 5 star hotels would), he almost proudly said oh “we only have Barossa ham and bacon”. Basically take it or leave it. No empathy or attempt to make the guests happy at all. So despite breakfast being part of the package, we only had breakfast 2 out of the 6 nights we stayed there. We’d rather pay the $AUD 100 (both ways) Uber ride to have breakfast somewhere else. We also had dinner at Martha Hardy’s and we thought the food was average and expensive. The oysters were very good but we’ve had much better steaks in many restaurants in Adelaide and Sydney. Finally, Mount Lofty House is part of the Accor group but in reality does not honor it. I’m a Diamond member and when I asked what benefit it may entail, the response was “oh you’ll get more points”. No upgrade, no discounts, no vouchers…nothing. Why be part of a loyalty group if you won’t accord benefits to guests even with the highest level of membership? For all those reasons, Mount Lofty is potentially great for guests who want to be off grid for 2-3 days, but we won’t be back to Mount Lofty. Dissapointing stay despite all the awards.