Travelling with a family, whether young or old, can be a bit of a challenge; there is so much you need to take, and so many different personalities and little quirks that should be catered for. The Movenpick Hotels, are now offering a Movenpick Family program within all their resorts and hotels, to help you to ensure that your family holidays are that little bit easier to manage. We were lucky enough to stay at the Movenpick Den Bosch (Hertogenbosch) hotel to check out their services, and the hotel itself.
Movenpick Den Bosch Hotel Location
Movenpick Den Bosch is located a 5-10 minute bus journey from the centre of the town, around a lake, within easy reach of the bus stop for travel on the Transferium; the local Park and Ride.
Source: Movenpick
Tickets for the bus are a mere four Euros for a family of four (1 Euro per person), and can easily be bought from the extremely efficient staff on the front desk. This includes travel for a whole day on this line.
The bus drops you right in the centre of the town, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral, and also within easy reach of booking the boat trips that are a must around the town. These can also be arranged from within the hotel too.
To get to the hotel itself, it is a little more problematic if you haven’t hired a car; which you can, of course, do from both Amsterdam Schipol or Eindhoven Airport. Travelling without a car is harder; you could get a taxi for c. 75 Euros each way, but a cheaper option would be a train from either Schipol to s’ Hertogenbosch or from Eindhoven too. We travelled in a car from Eindhoven, and it was a very easy trip, particularly as Eindhoven is so much smaller than airports we are used to in the U.K.; so much more pleasant to navigate through with the kids!
Movenpick Den Bosch Hotel Food
The Movenpick Den Bosch has its own restaurant which is in a gorgeous location on the shores of the lake. It is perfectly possible to sit outside, on warmer days, and enjoy both their breakfast, and their delicious dinner menus. Something that is particularly helpful is the little playground in the corner of the restaurant on the terrace, which can even keep older kids happy…..particularly if they like jumping:
Breakfast
Breakfast in the hotel can be included within the cost of your room; and is also charged at 19.50 Euros per person. This does mean its a little more expensive than some hotels, BUT within the Movenpick Family program, kids under six eat free, and those under 12 are charged at half-price.
Breakfast is well stocked, and this means even the fussiest of children will be happy – and the tea selection, should keep the parents pleased as well!
The food choices includes cooked breakfast, such a mini sausages, bacon, and scrambled egg, as well as the typical continental meat selection that is so famous within the Netherlands.
There seems to be enough to keep the most competitive of kids happy too…
Dinner
The dinner menu at the hotel has a theme every month; their wonderfully imaginative cullinary calendar. All themes are available on the Movenpick Den Bosch website.
The Movenpick Family program offers a selection of Power Bites for the kids. If you are looking for playful food, then your kids are more than likely to get it with this offering from the hotel chain.
Anyone for lion mash, pirate treasure veggies or tic tac toe fish sticks? The food is free as well, for under six, and half price for under 12s, so it shouldn’t stretch your budgets too far.
For older children, they might be interested in choosing from the adult menu, and both of our children can’t recommend the steaks and the summer salads enough! It was a little difficult to get the steaks well done; but this could be the age old problem with chefs being rather reluctant to cook the flavour out of the meat. No chef likes to nuke their steaks! However, it is worth the staff remembering that most kids would much rather their steaks aren’t too rare ;-).
The desserts on the adult menu (and the kids) are, of course, strongly focused on ice cream, and there are a lot of flavours to choose from…
And they are delicious as well! The sundae’s are rather impressive, with some people getting a little over excited when they appeared….
Family accommodation at Movenpick Den Bosch
We have generally steered clear of staying in hotels with the kids; the accommodation is usually just to difficult to get our head around; how do we maintain our privacy, while making sure that the kids are safe?
Family rooms, or apartments are really the only way for accommodation for families to work well. It is wonderful that Movenpick Family are offering these to everyone, so that people are happy with their stay, but can also stay together and feel safe. This is, in fact, their happinest offer! Rooms were 144 Euros for the night at Movenpick Hertogenbosch, and that includes breakfast, and free food for the kids if they are under six in the restaurant. You can also ask the hotel to provide various items for the family to make the stay easier, from cots, to bottles. It is worth checking the Movenpick site for offers for this hotel, and for others should you choose to stay with them.
The only downside to the Family room was that the connecting rooms were both twin beds, so we would recommend the hotels reconsidering this, and potentially including a double bed in one of the rooms because typically this would be required by the parents/carers of the kids in the connecting twin. For older families though, the connecting twin rooms could work a treat if parents are able to get a room next door! ;-)
Overall impressions of Movenpick Den Bosch (8/10)
From the first moment we arrived at the hotel, it was clear that the staff were going to offer us a very traditional dutch experience; well organised, and extremely polite. The staff were very accommodating with the kids, and a highlight of the stay for them was the wonderful little sweets bag, and T-shirt that they were given upon arrival into the room. Though my two are a little anti-licorice, so might have preferred slightly less of the black stuff ;-).
The day we travelled was also a family birthday, and it was lovely to see that they were willing to add some very considerate little touches to the room on our arrival to make the birthday a little bit special. No-one can complain if there is fizz and chocolate involved on their birthday, right?
Because the hotel was located a little further out, we didn’t have immediate access to the tourist information centre, but we really didn’t need it. The concierge service at the hotel was excellent; they were able to book excursions for us, including to a local theme park (Efteling), and provide us with transport tickets as needed. They were also more than able to provide us with English leaflets for most of the relevant attractions in the town centre. They were really willing to help your family stay run as smoothly as possible; including giving us an extra pillow when we realised our slightly older bodies weren’t quite able to manage with one!
In summary, this is a great family hotel, that goes the extra mile to make sure you have a good break – including those little touches that can make a holiday really special. Feeling pampered on a family holiday is a little bit of a surprise these days! We would recommend the hotel, and the program to anyone with children. Give Movenpick a bash – it’ll have you smiling and having fun!
We were invited to the hotel for the purposes of review; all opinions are our own, and we have given a full honest review of our stay with full editorial control.
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine!Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time.KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10.It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania.Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on.Get in touch TODAY!