Plantage Garden Apartments

We had a lovely family stay over Christmas. The apartment was warm and clean, and close to the center of Amsterdam. The hotel staff were friendly and attentive too. Only issue was that some gadgets were nearly broken, and to get fresh air we had to open the entrance door. 👍

The Plantage area is beautiful, and I'd like to come back someday, just to a different hotel. Allure's customer service was negligent, though. I stayed in the Lotus North apartment, and with my autoimmune disease, cleanliness and hygiene matter a lot to me. Dust covered the top of almost every surface, and there was no hot water tap in the toilet room. Having no hot water or heating for the start of my stay was outrageous and dangerous for someone with my illness, but reception ignored this and the other issues I raised in my email to the manager. We had no hot water or heating for two days of our week-long stay before we called reception. Maintenance took an hour and a half to arrive and turn on the heat. When we called again, reception blamed the old building and told us to email the manager, who apparently wasn't in from Friday to Sunday. More than a week later, I still haven't received a reply. The apartment also contains the building's electrical and heating maintenance equipment, so if someone else has a problem, such as their power suddenly going out, maintenance has to enter your apartment to fix it. Nothing is soundproofed. You hear every noise in the building, including every toilet flush, heating turning on and water going down drains. Reception treated that as a non-issue and blamed the old building. At night, someone upstairs smoked weed and started again as soon as they woke up. Noise continued into the early hours, despite extra rules in the information email that other rooms weren't following: “Be quiet between 08:00 and 20:00,” “Be silent between 20:00 and 08:00,” and “No drugs on or outside premesis.” The check-in location was 200 meters from the metro and 700 meters from the apartment. I have a disability that limits my mobility, so getting there was difficult. The room door won't shut fully on its own. It looks closed, but you can open it unless you pull the handle to make the keycard lock work. After we'd already paid, we were asked for a €300 security deposit, a quarter of what we'd paid for the week. The €150 city tax wasn't mentioned until check-in. More than a week after checkout, I still haven't got the deposit back, and I'm waiting to see if I'll ever get that money again.

It was a very clean, small apartment, just as the photos led me to expect. The area felt very safe, and there was convenient access to transport, good coffee shops and a nice pizza restaurant.

The separate reception was about 750 meters from the hotel, and I had to use Google Maps to find my way there in the rain for check-in and checkout. That made an already frustrating stay worse. I also booked a two-bedroom apartment, but its staircase to the upper floor was so narrow that getting my luggage up there was practically impossible. I had to leave everything downstairs. I'm disappointed with the value for the money and can't recommend this hotel. The stay left me with a very bad impression.