Berlin – Holiday Inn Berlin City West

The lobby of the Holiday Inn at Berlin City West, which is my last hotel of this trip before flying back to London Heathrow. It was a free redemption night, so that proved to be something of a bargain. There was a wait of several minutes for a staff member to be free at reception, but when it was my turn to be served she was really friendly. Although the check-in process took six minutes from my arriving at the counter to leaving it, which is unusually long.

That’s less a fire plan on the back of the door and more of an architect’s drawing….

The room was bright and modern.

A slightly half-arsed tea tray, three coffees and one sugar. I’m guessing that this wasn’t properly restocked from a previous guest. And the cups didn’t match.

And on that subject of half-arsed efforts, this is cheap and nasty. Not only are they selling the water for €3.50 (which seems unnecessarily high given that all the other hotels on my trip have given it out for free), they haven’t bothered to check that the previous guest has broken the seal and drunk some of the water. If a hotel really insists on trying to charge for things like this, it could at least bother to check them.

I’m used to drinks vouchers from Accor, but this one worked the same way, although the receptionist and bar staff seemed to have a different view on which drinks were included. Fortunately their difference of opinion had no impact on my choice.

The bar area of the hotel, which was spacious, but became dark fairly quickly.

The free large beer that I was given. It was cool and refreshing at least.

I’ve never noticed the logo of this beer before.

Overall, the room was clean and there were no noise disturbances either internally or externally. I’m not sure how much the room was as it was a free redemption, but it only cost 10,000 points which is at the very low end of the IHG redemption charges.

The check-in process took far too long, although I was in no rush. I was though impressed at just how fast the wi-fi was, a very impressive speed and I didn’t experience any issues with this. I imagine that much of this hotel’s trade is because of the nearby Berlin Tegel Airport, so when that closes there might be decent room rates to be had here. It’s a large hotel and they’ll have to fill it somehow….