muckross house

Fuinseog

a beautiful house, but admission charges are steep and staff are arrogant and rude. although the vast majority of the visitors are French and German they only offer tours in English expecting foreigners to undertand. Not everyone speaks English and this is bad business and a shoddy way to treat people. peopel will come for the gardens but i can admisssion to the house falling.

kerry4sam

Fuinseog wrote: »

a beautiful house, but admission charges are steep and staff are arrogant and rude. although the vast majority of the visitors are French and German they only offer tours in English expecting foreigners to undertand. Not everyone speaks English and this is bad business and a shoddy way to treat people. peopel will come for the gardens but i can admisssion to the house falling.

It is a shame that you had a bad experience in Killarney, and especially in one of our prominent tourist spots.

Can anyone who reads this maybe tell us if it was always this way with regards only offering the tours in English? or would this maybe be a result of cutbacks in the wrong area of the business?

ejmaztec

I only ever went into the house during Heritage Week, because I'm a skinflint, but never noticed any guides offering tours in anything but English.

There were probably foreign-language glossy guide-books in the shop, for a price:eek:.

Perhaps they were sneakingly handing out sheets of paper, written in French, German or whatever, to tourists, but I don't recall seeing any.

http://www.heritageweek.ie/

Fuinseog

ejmaztec wrote: »

I only ever went into the house during Heritage Week, because I'm a skinflint, but never noticed any guides offering tours in anything but English.

There were probably foreign-language glossy guide-books in the shop, for a price:eek:.

Perhaps they were sneakingly handing out sheets of paper, written in French, German or whatever, to tourists, but I don't recall seeing any.

http://www.heritageweek.ie/

they have a glossy magazine in French and German for 5 Euro, which is grand. The tour of the house is 7 Euro, which will be in english only. germans and french are given a poorly photocopied piece of paper, which they are expected to give back when leaving, but even this only contains a few basic facts and tourists are paying for the full price and getting half the service. it has been like this for years. I cannot believe that people are still going into the house.

if we were to go to Neuschwannstein or Versailles we would expect a tour in English, especially when paying the normal price.
Killarney is full of French and German speakers so there is no reason for not engaging them. they might even be more enthusiastic about the than those doing it at the moment who regard it as a chore and are clearly bored with it.

ejmaztec

Fuinseog wrote: »

they have a glossy magazine in French and German for 5 Euro, which is grand. The tour of the house is 7 Euro, which will be in english only. germans and french are given a poorly photocopied piece of paper, which they are expected to give back when leaving, but even this only contains a few basic facts and tourists are paying for the full price and getting half the service. it has been like this for years. I cannot believe that people are still going into the house.

if we were to go to Neuschwannstein or Versailles we would expect a tour in English, especially when paying the normal price.
Killarney is full of French and German speakers so there is no reason for not engaging them. they might even be more enthusiastic about the than those doing it at the moment who regard it as a chore and are clearly bored with it.

You'd think that they'd have gotten their act together by now, wouldn't you.

I was handed the odd scrappy piece of paper in various places in the Czech Republic, and had they spoken German or French, I might have managed to work out what the hell the guides' were talking about, but with Czech, I had no chance.

Over there they had an excuse, in that they were still getting used to non Soviet-bloc tourists arriving in their masses. Here, they've been doing it for so long, they've got no excuse at all. They're too busy assuming that tourists will come here whatever kind of service they offer. In tourism, bad news travels fast.

trotter_inc

Fuinseog wrote: »

peopel will come for the gardens but i can admisssion to the house falling.

I've been to Muckross House gardens many a time but have never bothered going in to the actual house I'm surprised they haven't started charging people for parking there...won't be long though I bet!

trotter_inc

Fuinseog wrote: »

a beautiful house, but admission charges are steep and staff are arrogant and rude. although the vast majority of the visitors are French and German they only offer tours in English expecting foreigners to undertand. Not everyone speaks English and this is bad business and a shoddy way to treat people. peopel will come for the gardens but i can admisssion to the house falling.

Have you provided them with feedback on your visit there? Would strongly recommend it, if people don't complain then nothing will change.