25hours Hotel Hafencity

A bit quirky. Designed for the younger tourist but not the business traveler. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. the room had lots of fun features. The bed was very comfortable. The bathroom was modern and functional. The front desk was efficient and helpful.

Y'know, no complaints, really. Comfortable enough room for a fair price.

But 25 Hours Hotels don't stop there, oh no! They try to make you LIKE them, like, REALLY LIKE them. Every corner you turn slaps you with another piece of whimsy, almost always in English. Words everywhere on walls, many forming putative jokes. Instead of a simple DND/Please-Clean-My-Room sign, a 25 page flip-book from which you can choose a snarky message to send to housekeeping. Desks like steamer trunks. Wallpaper that looks like newspaper clippings, except the clippings are apparently Hamburg in-jokes.

All annoying, but acceptable. What was unacceptable was staff who simply didn't pay attention to my requests for things as simple as a bill made out to the normal German corporate standard for tax invoices, and instructions for taxis--read Colleen C.'s review for another example. The place is so busy being bubbly and hip that it sometimes forgot to actually cover the basics.

Service is slow if you get any service at all. Do not book a conference here as you'll waste a lot of time going down to eat in the restaurant because they won't bring food to your meeting room. Probably a good hotel for hipsters but not business people.

Let's just make it 26 hours, shall we?

25 hours for the hotel name.
+1 hour to actually get a room. (IN A DIFFERENT HOTEL)

Travel weary after a long day of flying, working and dining -- I rolled up to the trendy 25hours hotel ready for some sleeping.

Instead, I was met with a crowded lobby full of sports enthusiasts (near midnight) and a somewhat unapologetic reception guy telling me they'd been overbooked. WHAT?

Let's pause here for a moment -- I do not understand a hotel being overbooked. The number of rooms is static, not variable. Every night they have the same number. They should book this number of guests, no? The reception guy assured me this happens "very often" but in all my travels all over the place the past 7 years, this has not happened to me one time.

However, I get it. Things happen. He told me that they'd pay for my transport to the other hotel and quickly ushered me out to a taxi and gave me a voucher for it. They'd rebook me to the new hotel for my stay. Ok, fine. Let us get on with the show, my sleep time was becoming shorter and shorter.

Please keep in mind at no point did he write down the name of the new hotel, or direct the taxi driver or really help me with anything at all. For a hotel that mega-f'ed up on obverbooking, I'd expect that they'd at least treat this major inconvenience with some grace.

Can you see where this is going?

My taxi driver, who I assumed had been given proper directions to where ever I was to be sleeping that evening -- drove me over to the 25 hours Altona. Which seemed sensible I'd be sent to their other property.

But in fact, after driving 15 minutes and showing up at reception -- they were also overbooked and I was mistakenly driven there by the unsuspecting taxi driver who had not been given directions. Oy vey, 25 hours. Seriously. So now here I am, past midnight at the second hotel of the evening -- with no room at the Inn. Is this a christmas story? I need a manger and a donkey, I don't even care at this point I just want to sleep.

Luckily my taxi driver had to come back in after she dropped me because the voucher hadn't covered the whole journey and she needed some cash. So after forking over 10 euros of my own money to cover the errant journey, I hopped back in the car with her (and another subpar voucher) to go BACK to Hafencity to check into the Hotel Ameron, the correct hotel. I gave her the voucher (15 euro) plus some more of my money to cover the joyride around Hamburg and prayed that this was actually the place I might sleep.

And it was. It's a fine hotel and very nice so that's not really the issue. The 1 star for 25 hours is based on their extremely poor communication, customer service and for overbooking me in the first place. How about this? If someone hasn't checked in yet -- maybe CALL THEM and save them the trouble? Or just don't take too many bookings? Or if you do perhaps handle it like professionals and not like some teenagers at their first job.

Not impressed.

Not overpriced, simple, clean and quiet. i stay here every time I am on business in Hamburg with my colleagues since it is only a 2 block walk to our office in Hafin City. Friendly but unfortunately if you fly from the States for a Monday meeting, no rooms so you will have to wait until people checkout and staff cleans rooms. Rooms has everything you need for sleep and work at a good price per night. Breakfast is very nice as well.

Pretty good, dogg, pretty good!

I didn't love Hamburg, (came during a heat wave) but the 25 Hours was an awesome place to come home to. Check-in was a breeze, there is free wifi that actually works, and the rooms have air conditioning. So I can't really complain because it met my most important criteria. If every hotel in the world did this, the world would be a way better place!

The house is full of artifacts and objects and is very... designed. There is a lot of English writing everywhere, sometimes with some funny mis-spellings. Sometimes all the English writing can get a little didactic. The soap in the shower says "STOP RUNNING THE WATER WHILE USING ME". Ummm, it's like 95 degrees out and it took me like 8 hours to get here, y'all cool if I just take a shower? Coo'? We good?

I don't know. I also really don't love rules - there are enough in Germany! But I think it is meant to be funny.

The restaurant is great.

I would definitely send friends here and would definitely come back!