We recently stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on our vacation to Germany. This was the second stop…read moreon our trip, and we were here for 3 nights. We were visiting Germany with three other friends and found this hotel on Expedia. Our bigger complaint would be with Expedia, not the actual hotel.
I will say it is very difficult to book hotels in a different country when you don't really know the area. Looking on maps as best we could and taking Expedia's advice, it seemed like this hotel was very close to lots of different Munich sites including Oktoberfest. When we first booked this room, we had chosen the option to pay at the hotel when checking in, however after booking, we were charged the full amount of the hotel stay. Which was six months before we actually stayed. It wasn't a huge inconvenience; it was just unexpected and when we reached out to Expedia they were not helpful and said that hotels can choose to charge the full amount if they feel like. Again our bigger issue is with Expedia not the actual hotel. My only concern was that somehow we were still going to end up having to pay once we got to the hotel.
The actual hotel is about 30 minutes from the train station and 45-minutes to the airport and more in a suburb. It was not close to anything we planned on doing while in Munich and required us to use Ubers and taxis the entire time. It is a little confusing as it is attached to another Holiday Inn. These are the same companies except one is an express. My husband and I ended up booking the express side and the rest of our group the other side. Even though the two hotels were attached to each other, we could not eat breakfast together and had to eat breakfast in the hotel we had booked.
We were greeted right away when we arrived, she was able to find our reservation on Expedia. We originally were supposed to have three people in our room, and the price had included a charge for the third person. The third person dropped out of the trip about two months before and I had called the hotel to have that charge removed. I was told they could not remove it. When we checked in she asked about the three people, to which I reminded her I had called and was told we can't remove that charge. I also asked about being charged for the full amount. She talked to another employee for a few minutes in German, I have no idea what they were discussing. But she did say that we we're all paid and we were not required to put a card down for any incidentals or charges. She also offered us some drinks from the cooler for our inconvenience. My husband and I got two beers and two waters, which we thought was very nice.
The room is a typical Holiday Inn, except small. We were in Europe and expected the small room and there was only two of us, so it was not an issue. I did think though, had we had that third person it would have been extremely tight in the room. There was one queen bed, with a very small couch that was a pull out and then a very small bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet. The bathroom was very small but the shower was a very good size. My only issue with the room is that the bathroom had a very strong sulfur type smell when the water ran and from the toilet and there was only one channel on the TV that was in English.
We did receive free breakfast with our reservation, and breakfast was very very good. They had specialty coffee machines that made espressos, lattes, macchiatos and more. We definitely had our espressos in the morning. They also had juice and water available. And then a very nice selection of food. Going down the row they had different dry cereals with milk. Something to note is that their milk was not kept cold like it is usually in America. They also had a yogurt bar, tomatoes and cucumbers, and fruit salad along with whole fruit. They had a nice selection of deli meat and cheeses as well as different breads including pretzel rolls, chocolate croissants, plain croissants and more. They also had little muffins and doughnuts and a electronic Nutella dispensing machine that you could add Nutella to little tart cups. They also had a pancake machine that spit out little dollops of pancakes, hard boiled and scrambled eggs, oatmeal, and bacon and sausage. It was a nice buffet, actually a very wide variety of food when compared to a Holiday Inn in America. We were highly impressed with the breakfast that they offered.
This was a very nice hotel, everyone always said hi as we came and went, and the room was clean every day if you wanted and it was just very nice. If we went back to Munich, I would definitely consider staying here again, just knowing that we would need to take a taxi or an Uber to wherever we wanted to go.
