ibis Styles Berlin City Ost

This is a basic hotel, but good value for money. The rooms were clean, the beds comfortable and the bathroom decent. It’s right by the underground network, with shops and bars in Freidrichshain an easy walk away and two supermarkets next door. Our room at the back was quiet enough. The main road is busy and noisy, though, so I’d keep the windows shut if staying in a front room.

The main problem was the reception service. After running the Berlin Marathon on a very hot Sunday, I got back exhausted and found that our room hadn’t been tidied. My wife raised it with the receptionist, who said the cleaning staff had told him they’d done it, so it was fine on their side. I went back upstairs, took photos as proof, and was told the hotel manager would be contacted. Nobody ever got back to us. Once we returned to Italy, I submitted an enquiry through the B&B Hotel company website to explain what happened and ask for a partial refund for that day. There was no reply. Six months have passed and nobody has contacted me. That’s really poor from a European company that sends offers and hotel news every week. We stayed last September for the Berlin Marathon. The price was ridiculously high at 213€ compared with the usual 78€ rate, though I expected that because of the major event. The hotel is next to a metro station, it’s clean, and the room was simple, as is standard for B&B hotels.

Don’t stay here. The hotel is awful, and the area feels like the worst parts of Manchester, Liverpool’s Huyton or Glasgow’s tenements. The beds are horrible, the pillows feel like 23 cotton wool balls stuffed into a sack, and the place looks like an immigration holding centre. The air conditioning has two settings, hot and the gates of hell. At night it turns into Resident Evil: police and ambulance sirens keep going, bottles smash, and people fight outside with music blaring at 5am. Drunks sit outside from 10am until 2am. It’s a complete **** pit.

The bed was really comfortable and super light, better than beds in much more expensive hotels. The hotel was clean, and the receptionist was very polite.