Holiday Inn Express City Centre West Berlin

...ended up staying at the Holiday Inn Express City Centre West.

Cost
Cost is always my prime consideration when making any purchase so I was delighted with the price of £27 per person per night for a twin room at the Holiday Inn Express, especially given the poor Euro exchange rate for tourists. This was a special offer from one of the many websites that offers good deals on hotels. The special offer gave 25% off the standard ...
...want to spend half our holiday on transport. However, we discovered that Berlin doesn't really have a centre. There are lots of mini centres all over the city and our hotel was situated in one of these. It is situated on Kurfurstenstrasse, which we found to be very central. There is a U-Bahn station within five minutes walk of the hotel which gives access to the whole city. There were numerous restaurants and bars within easy walking distance of ... more

My friend and I went to Berlin earlier on this month for a short break to get away from the bad Scottish weather. We were away for three days and four nights and were looking for somewhere cheap but comfortable to stay. We ended up staying at the Holiday Inn Express City Centre West.

Cost
Cost is always my prime consideration when making any purchase so I was delighted with the price of £27 per person per night for a twin room at the Holiday Inn Express, especially given the poor Euro exchange rate for tourists. This was a special offer from one of the many websites that offers good deals on hotels. The special offer gave 25% off the standard price so the standard price would be £36 per night. This is still pretty good value I think, for the reasons listed below in my review…

Booking
As mentioned above I booked through a website (of which I can't remember the name). No deposit was required when making a booking which was great.

Arrival
On arrival we were welcomed by a member of staff and asked how we wished to pay. When we said cash it was requested that we pay in advance for our full booking. This surprised me slightly as I've never had to pay in advance for a hotel and we had already provided credit card details to provide a guarantee (in case we trashed the room). Anyway, we handed over the cash and completed our check-in. This was about all check-in consisted of. We weren't given any more information about the hotel eg where breakfast was served. However, the member of staff was friendly and if we had had any questions then I would have felt free to ask her.

Room
Our room was on the first floor and we made our way up in the lift. The room was compact but very light and airy considering its size. The décor was very modern and it looked like the room had recently been redecorated. The room had all the usual facilities - hairdryer, TV, phone, wi-fi, kettle etc. The TV was a wide screen and had about 30 channels in various different languages. The en suite was very compact but exceptionally clean and modern. My one complaint was that there were no free biscuits in the room! It wasn't luxurious but then you wouldn't expect it to be when you're paying £27 a night!

Location
We had been looking for a centrally located hotel that would give us easy access to the sites of the city. Given that we were only in Berlin for three days we didn't want to spend half our holiday on transport. However, we discovered that Berlin doesn't really have a centre. There are lots of mini centres all over the city and our hotel was situated in one of these. It is situated on Kurfurstenstrasse, which we found to be very central. There is a U-Bahn station within five minutes walk of the hotel which gives access to the whole city. There were numerous restaurants and bars within easy walking distance of the hotel which was great in the evenings. There is a large shopping centre with a variety of shops to suit all budgets about ten minutes walk away and the city zoo is about a five minute walk away.
We felt quite safe walking around in the evenings in the vicinity of the hotel but you didn't have to go too far from the hotel before you were in an area that wasn't quite so safe feeling.

Breakfast
The hotel offers a continental breakfast which is included in the room rate for the night (which I think is becoming more and more rare these days). The breakfast includes croissants, cereal, rolls, orange juice, tea, coffee, eggs and toast. The breakfast is self-service and you are free to help yourself to as much as you like. There is no restaurant in the hotel.

Staff
The staff were helpful any time we had any questions but they were not overly helpful. In most hotels the staff will smile when you approach reception but not in this hotel!

Atmosphere
The atmosphere in the hotel was relaxed. There is a small area in reception where there are seats and you can have a coffee and there is also a small bar. There is also internet access in the reception area. There were a variety of guests staying at the hotel - from young families and groups of friends to elderly couples and businessmen.

Overall, we both really enjoyed our stay at the Holiday Inn. Because the hotel was such good value I was worried that the hotel was going to be unclean and generally not very nice. But, I was wrong. The hotel was very pleasant, offered exceptional value and I would highly recommend it. 

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