Friendly staff, awesome location in Lugano. The old-school interior is not my thing, but the hotel…read moreis not trying to be chic. Wish I had brought my tennis stuff to play on their clay court.

Wonderful hotel, excellent service, clean rooms and a beautiful view! We enjoyed our stay!read more

Stayed there inJuly 2010. Great little hotel (and the luggage delivery system from the street…read moreparking level down to the hotel is interesting!). Great view of Lake Lugano and really great waking up to palm trees in Switzerland!

It was very pleasant to have breakfast here this morning. Katia gave us very good service and the…read morehotel room is very special and clean too .

Hotel City was outstanding: it was great in all the ways that Swiss hotels are great, and not…read moreflawed in the ways they can be flawed. The hotel itself is clean, modern, and elegant, even if in a slightly Euro way (some of the furniture can remind you of IKEA). The rooms are unusually large. The breakfast is excellent. The WiFi works really well. The staff are friendly and accommodating (the breakfast staff especially so). The public spaces are simple but pleasant (even the staircase was created with an eye for design). The floors are also laid out well. Every floor has a printer, shoe cleaner, and coffee machine (in addition to coffee/tea facilities in the room), which are constantly refilled. Call down for an iron and you'll have one in minutes. That is, this place works just as well for business as leisure. The rooms feature air conditioning. There must be times in the summer when that's really useful. Even during more temperate times, it can help if a room starts to feel stuffy. A/C isn't a given in many European hotels, so it's a feature worth noting. One other noteworthy quality: two blocks north of the hotel is a self-service laundromat [https://www.lavanderiaselfservice.ch/], which is open long hours, has English instructions, and has friendly staff who also speak some English. [Tip: the washers automatically dispense detergent.] It's close enough that you can start off a wash, return to the hotel, eat a 30 min breakfast, walk back over, and your washing will just about be done. The quality of location depends on what you're in town for. It's not next to the waterfront or the pedestrian zones, which are a 10-15 minute walk away. However, it is right next to USI (the main university). Also, if for some reason you can't or don't want to walk, there are several bus lines that depart from a block away in multiple directions that will get you to the pedestrian zone, waterfront, Parco Civico, central bus station, train station, Paradiso, etc. quite promptly, so this location even works for a tourist. What you lose in absolute location you gain in price, facilities, and quality of service. If I had to pick one nit, it's the silly WiFi registration system, which requires an authentication every time you return to the hotel network. If you forget to re-authenticate you aren't connected, which means you could be eating up data on an expensive roaming plan (wonder how I know that...). Without getting all nerdy here, it's not hard to improve the authentication step so that this repeated authentication isn't required, and that would be a clear improvement. But, you know, you're really plumbing the depths when that's all you have to complain about...

My group and I stopped in to take a look at the hotel lobby as we were walking by. The woman at the…read morefront desk was very welcoming and was happy to show us to the back to see the view. It was was nice sunny day in February and the view was hard to pass up, so we stopped for a drink accompanied by an apertif. Although I cannot speak on the food itself, I can definitely recommend this hotel for a drink on a nice day.

Great View, Good Food…read more A friend who is resident in Lugano introduced us to this well-known lakeside restaurant within a very established, some say stuffy, hotel in Lugano. The terrace view is great and we enjoyed an avocado salad, the vegetarian lasagna, and well-prepared salmon. Service was professional but perfunctory. Prices are on the high side, but this is Lugano. We ate well and enjoyed the view. As the other review, written years ago noted, observing the other clientele has a certain entertainment value, but not because they are young and hip. Not much has changed in a decade.

A friend highly recommended we stay here, and she was right…read more This is a beautifully situated boutique hotel with nine rooms, accessible by walking a few hilly miles or taking a boat - no vehicle access. If interested, check out their website. It's accurate. The manager picked us up at a car park nearby and brought us back, all in a small outboard motor boat. (There is a ferry from Lugano that stops there too.) The staff was fabulous - welcoming, friendly, helpful, flexible, everything you could want. Our room (#5) had fabulous views out over Lake Como and the Alps. Breakfast was included, and that was terrific too. Dinner is available, but in the off season like April it's not too exciting. Figuring out how to get to their car park was a project. Google map assumes the road on the hillside above the hotel provides access - it does not. You need to find Via Riviera out of Lugano, go east, and take Via Cortivo, a very narrow road that splits off to the right. Go to the end and look for the small parking area at the boat dock underneath you. 50 metres back is the lane going down there, which is where you'll park IF they are coming to pick you up. Or take the ferry from Lugano. Hopefully those directions save you an hour of online research and much concern as you try to find someone who speaks enough English to direct you.