de Gulde Schoen

The apartment is right in the old city centre, with restaurants and bars all around, yet it was really quiet at night and felt like a safe area. Room 7 has loads of space, with a huge bed, sofa and two giant TV screens. The shower room is gigantic, but there isn't full privacy: it's in the middle of the apartment, with two giant glass windows looking straight into it as you walk past. The toilet is in a separate room near the living area. The rooms are beautiful and tastefully decorated. There was a coffee machine, pods and creamer in the fridge, two small bottles of water, a kettle and one tea bag. There's a supermarket across the road in the basement of the plaza. The apartment felt cold at night at 20 degrees, and the heating was restricted.

There's a lot of potential here, with large rooms and cool design, though things are getting a little tatty. Cleaning felt lazy: dust on less-used surfaces, and the bins hadn't been emptied after the previous guests, which was disgusting. In rooms 1 and 2, the doors scrape along the floor and won't open unless you shoulder them, a serious health and safety risk in an emergency. The AC didn't work, it just flashed.

Don't book. This isn't a staffed hotel anymore, though it's still marketed as one. We found a beautiful room, but that's all the place has going for it. The climate controls were broken, and with 14C outside we spent the night sweating in 26C heat while the thermostat flashed errors. There was no staff to speak to, and no contact number was provided. Their listed number is disconnected. For a leaky toilet, all they did was provide a bathmat. 0/10, would not recommend.

The location was the only good thing about this place. We were looking for a real hotel to avoid exactly these kinds of problems, and at these prices, this was a huge disappointment. It seems to have become an Airbnb-style managed place but still presents itself as a professional hotel with a front desk on many booking sites. The number in the welcome email was no longer active, and they didn't answer email during our several-day stay. When we arrived, there were “for rent” signs on the front window and the place looked abandoned. An Airbnb guest showed us how to get in through a small side door. The next evening we had to help an older couple outside who were bewildered. They had no room number and had to try their access code on each room. The only thing you're sent is the code, 48hrs before your stay, with no clear instructions. At first glance, our room looked as beautiful as the photos because it used to be a luxury hotel. But it hasn't been well maintained since the transition and is losing its grandeur. It was incredibly dusty, the toilet leaked onto the floor when flushed, one window had been repaired with tape, and the heat/AC unit didn't work. It seems that even when it does work, you're “restricted” in what you can set: nearly every button we pressed led to that message. Whichever mode we tried, the unit ran for a few minutes, made a lot of noise, blew no air and shut itself off. During several beautiful summer days and evenings in Antwerp, with highs of 23C and lows of 10C, the room was unbearably hot at night. One window opened, but even with it open, the temperature only dropped by 1 C.