PARK INN BY RADISSON BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ

Our tour guide told us there were a thousand rooms in this hotel and I can believe it. The hotel seems have been designed by someone in the communist era who was trying to copy the West. Whoever did design it clearly never stayed there and they had tried some of those designs at home they would be sleeping on the couch. For example the shower door opened outwards so as soon as you opened it you pushed the bath mat away and water dripped off the shower door leaving a nice puddle for you to stand in. The wardrobe had a rail that went front to back instead of left to right so you had to move everything to get at what you wanted, not that there was much space to hang anything in there. As for the express check out, continental drift moves faster. On the plus side the food was OK, the piano bar was good and it is in a very good location. Basically this is a hotel for people who only want to stay for one night

Pros Location: Located in Alexanderplatz, bus and metro stations are just outside of the hotel. Restaurants, malls, cafes are all over the area. Rooms: We paid for a city view room which was big, clean and had an amazing view to the city and tv tower. Spagos Restaurant & Bar: great food, cocktails and service Cons Room amenities: A 4* hotel should include more than a shower cap and a shampoo/body wash bottle! Air condition: We could not control the A/C in our room which was outrageous! We had to contact the reception twice and they sent the technician in our room who turned on the A/C via the ceiling! WIFI NOT FREE: It is unacceptable to charge for wifi in 2017! Luggage storage charge: this should be included in hotel's services like other 4* hotels! Instead they charge 2€ per luggage! Knocking on our door from 08:00!! Cleaning services started knocking in hotel doors from 08:00 and entered the room before we were able to reply! Every single day for a week! Lastly, there is not much privacy for the person that uses the shower or toilet.

We stayed 12 nights in the Park Inn during June 2017 as part of a university study-abroad program. We got to know this hotel very well. Overall, it is a very good hotel and a true value, with a location that is among the most convenient in Berlin (right on Alexanderplatz, which abuts a busy train station where several of Berlin’s transit lines meet). The hotel is huge, with almost 40 stories. Even so, for the most part, service was excellent. For example, we noticed in the “Directory of Services” that kettles were available on request, and a call to the “Service Hotline” led to one being delivered to us in about three minutes. The hotel does not offer a “business center,” per se, but they will print out e-mails that are forwarded to the front desk, and we were surprised when our printout was brought to our room about 20 minutes later. The breakfast buffet is one of the best I have encountered in years in a European hotel. They have a large selection of hot dishes (several egg options, bacon, several types of sausage, potatoes, tomatoes), numerous fresh breads (provided by a local bakery), a great selection of fruit, a decent selection of meat/cheese, etc. We ate the breakfast for 12 days and were able to vary our intake each day so that it did not feel all that repetitive. Breakfast service staff are attentive and go out of their way to clear dishes and tables fairly quickly. That is important because the breakfast area is a madhouse between 8 and 9 AM, almost irrespective of the day of the week. We quickly learned that we should get our breakfast well before 8 or wait until after 9. The hotel has two evening dining options: Spago’s (lobby bar area) and Zille-Stube (German on 2nd floor). Neither was at the level of life-changing, but we found Zille-Stube to be preferable. (I believe that they have a terrace bar on one of the top floors, but we did not visit it.) Our rooms (we had two) were a bit larger than many European hotel rooms. As other reviewers have noted, the Park Inn showers are rather unusual, in that they are basically situated in the room itself. While there is a curtain that can be pulled around the glass enclosure, they afford users less privacy than is normal in hotel rooms. Similarly, while the room toilets are in a small separate room, one side of the toilet area has a frosted glass door, and the other side has a not-very-well-soundproofed door. So one’s toilet activities are a bit visible to others (or, at least, can be heard by others) even with the curtain drawn. This strikes me as an odd design for a hotel. The only service-related quibbles I have are related to conference catering rather than to the hotel rooms themselves. We used one of their conference rooms as a classroom, and there were a few challenges there. The staff would supply a nice cooler of ice water each morning, but our group would deplete it almost immediately. For several days, the staff never replenished it, and they began to do so only after I beseeched them a couple of times. Also, the conference rooms open into a shared space, and it appears to be the only space in which coffee/snacks can be served. Unfortunately, not all the conference groups pay to have coffee/snacks served, and the signage is not that specific (e.g, “for conference guests only,” without specifying which conference), so our group was reprimanded for taking beverages not intended for us, even though they were not all that well marked. This could be improved with something as simple as clearer signage. Overall, I have a very high opinion of this property and would recommend it to others, especially for the hotel/breakfast experiences. (The conference experience is a little lacking, in my opinion.)

It was clear that this hotel deals with its clients as if they were in the communist era. The client is not at the center of attention. You need to pay for everything, such as the Internet. There is no free Internet even at the lobby. In the rooms the soap finished and they wouldn't replace it. The staff was uninformed even about the times of breakfast. The queues for checking in were long and when I asked them to print me two pages from a USB they wouldn't. Also the supervisor was rude when we asked for help with the printing. We were told that her name was Mau. Altogether a terrible experience.

We stayed at the Park Inn, Alexanderplatz, Berlin for our 40th wedding anniversary. What a shock. The room was a throw back to the Stone Age. The toilet & shower were next to the beds, behind separate glass "saloon doors". A curtain was provided to spare your dignity, although this only covered a 1/3 off the room. Water leaked out under the shower door and all over the room floor. No privacy what so ever. We were in a Standard Double room on 26th floor. I asked for the bed clothes to be changed as I'm allergic to duck down quilts and pillows. I had to make the request 3 times before 12hrs later the sheets were changed and only after I had spent the 1st night suffering an asthma attack. We visited the "Roof Terrace Bar". Don't bother. We paid €16 for a beer, a bottle of coke and entry to what can only be called a steel cage with 10 deckchairs. No bar, no tables, no chairs, no hospitality, and a view off the sky line in front of the hotel. 3/4 of the view we're out of bounds. The beer & coke came from a fridge at the top of the stairs before you actually enter the "terrace". Total waste of time, effort and money. On our last night we decided to sit outside on the ground floor terrace next to the bar and restaurant. We were there a few minutes when we thought something had run between out feet. A few minutes later we discovered what it was. A large rat was running under the tables chasing sparrows that were flying about picking up scraps from under the tables. We grabbed our drinks and headed for the bar. I informed the waiter about the rats. He laughed and said they came into the bar to get at the nuts laid out on the tables for customers. UNBELIEVABLE. We paid our tab and left. We will not be going back.