I stayed 2 nights at the newly opened Novotel Wien Hauptbahnhof and it was a stay that left me with mixed feelings. It will perhaps be a better hotel when they are finished and actually ready to open.
Let's start with all the good things. The location is excellent, just steps away from the central station and easy to reach from Vienna Airport. The hotel is also as mentioned brand new so the look is modern and clean. It has a typical Novotel feel so trying to create a modern feel to it and it is light and airy.
The hotel offers rooms that are clean and nicely furnished. The upper floor rooms offer great views of the city. Big plus is also great air condition and good choice of tv channels (as usual in German speaking countries the options of channels in English is however really limited). What I also believe they should get credit for is the fact that they have provided plenty of plugs and connectors to charge phones, tablets and computers (6 in close proximity to the bed). Bathrooms are nice and big, with good light by the mirror, big mirrors as well as spacious shower. They also provide a coffee maker and water kettle.
They also offer a very nice gym and sauna department on the top floor and for those with kids there is a nice room for the kids to play (at entry level). The restaurant and bar downstairs look nice but appears as if it was not fully ready yet as I never saw the bar in the lobby staffed (granted I was moving through it either in the morning or very late in the evening).
Now for the things that are not so good. The rooms lack certain basic things that would be ok if it was a 2 star or a lower level 3 star hotel but I get the impression they want to be something more than that. First of all there is no desk in the room and no real option to sit anywhere with a computer. They have instead crammed a sofa in which sort of blocks a large part of the room while due to its position is rather useless as one cannot comfortably watch TV while seated in it but rather just look at the bed and the wall. They also have no iron and ironing board - while I can understand that I could not get one when asking about it - they promised to bring it the next morning before a specific time but did not happen until the second reminder which made for a stressful morning for me. If they want to be an option for business travelers I believe desk and iron an ironing board should be standard in the rooms.
The rooms also appear to not be finished as the safes do not work, confirmed by them that they are working on it. Offered storage downstairs in the lobby but does not replace non-functioning safes. Internet was also working on and off so sometimes great but at other times not at all or disconnecting frequently. Further improvements would be to consider adding some small things to the in general nice gym. There is no water in the gym (one can go into the sauna/spa and find a water fountain but the 2 times I was there the whole area was wet and fairly dirty (cleaning had not been done). There are also no shades or blinds in the gym and as it is located on the top floor with nice big windows and all machines facing the window it means the sun will be straight in the eyes from morning and at least for several more hours. Simple things to fix that will be big improvements.
The last part that should improve is staff. I believe it is start up issues but several small issues create annoyances. The do not disturb sign was ignored twice by staff wanting to enter the room. I had to ask several times for the iron and they did not keep to what was agreed (meaning I wait and then have to call). I also believe that the fact that the no safes are working should have been informed before or at least when checking in (and the offering to store things downstairs rather than force me to go all the way up, find out the safe is not working and then come down again). The fact that no one asked when checking out or at any other time during the stay whether everything was ok or the if I enjoyed the stay further made me feel that staff were perhaps not yet fully trained and/or a bit stressed by the situation.
All in all, still an ok stay and hopefully they will work out some of the issues. For me I would still doubt staying again as I usually come to Vienna on business and want a desk in the room as well as I depend on reliable internet access.
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