NI-MO is a great place overall and I'd gladly stay here again, though it also has some issues…read more
Pros: Fantastic location (just south of Bellevue/Opernhaus) with great access to all kinds of public transportation. Elegant and functional (if spartan) rooms. Spacious. Decent breakfast (eggs made to order on demand; if you want a milk substitute, just let them know and they'll get it for you, even in advance if you tell them before arrival). Great service. The lobby has coffee, sparkling water bottles, and ice cream available all day and night, a small fridge where you can store some things, as well as a few nice touches (biscuits as well as walnuts -- with a walnut-cracker provided!).
Those are the pros. So why not five stars? A few neutral points:
The price is actually fair once you factor in Zürich (as a rule-of-thumb, divide by two and ask if the price is reasonable for a major US city), but you are paying a lot and might expect a shade more for it.
Some people really like a hotel to have staff always present who can help them out with directions, restaurant recommendations, etc. I'm not one of them, so I couldn't care less. But for those who are, it's worth noting that the front desk is not regularly staffed. They do provide a number that I assume you can call at any time, and they are very responsive by email, but for some travelers it's not the same. As I said, wasn't an issue for me -- just a point of information. (One consequence of not being staffed continuously is that you have to coordinate your arrival time with them.)
And now the negatives:
We got a room overlooking Seefeldstrasse. While we were aware there are trams that run along that street, we hadn't expected them to feel quite so...immediate. As a result, even as someone who can sleep almost anywhere, the noise during the day made me nervous. Fortunately, the windows are great and block out the city noise almost entirely, but at the cost of making the room rather stuffy. On request the hotel immediately provided a fan that took care of the problem, but in the summer -- and Zürich summers are definitely getting warmer each year -- this lack of climate control could become quite uncomfortable.
For odd reasons, the hotel provided a hand-soap dispenser but neither dispenser nor bar soap for showering. There were just some cheap toiletries in little disposable plastic containers, the sort you get when you buy travel-sized body lotion, say. It was odd and unsatisfying to shower with soap coming out in liquid form out of a small disposable container.
The hand-soap dispenser was pretty much empty and despite telling the reception, it took two days to refill. This should have been on the cleaning staff's checklist and shouldn't have needed reminding in the first place. Easy to fix, just something they should note.
More problematically, the safe in the room was not actually attached to anything -- it was trivial to tip over or even carry out. Now I know hotel safes have their issues, but you'd like it to at least be attached to something... I guess the hotel didn't design for them, people asked for them, and so they put them on the only shelving in the room, but in a sloppy way that seems uncharacteristic of the Swiss.
And now for the odd one. I've never been to a Swiss hotel of any quality that didn't offer birchermüesli at breakfast. NI-MO does not. When I asked the breakfast lady if they had any, she said no and pointed to the cereals and said "you can make it yourself". Well, you can't make it yourself without the ingredients (which weren't available), but you also can't make it yourself right then and there because you need to _soak it for an extended period of time_! Yeah, I know, it's a tiny, tiny nit, but to this birchermüesli fan, to not be able to sample it in its homeland (indeed, home city) was a disappointment.
Overall, none of these are major issues, and in return for finding a nice place in a great location, very forgivable.
