Hotel AX — Hotel in Helsinki sub-region

My husband booked the Standard King room. This place has a lot of fine tuning before it runs smoothly to justify what they’re charging. Areas of improvement are in food safety, service management, and plumbing. Details below:

Pros: Everything is still clean, shiny and new. Its’ neighborhood is affluent, modern, and urban residential. The staff is friendly and polite.

They have big, new smart TVs. We could cast Spotify to it from our phones, but not Netflix. TV had a YouTube app we could watch though.

But to make the TV work, we had to do first-time user set up, like region selection and connecting wiFi etc. They should’ve completed this beforehand.

The toilets have bidet hoses, but FYI you need to turn on the sink for it to work.

Cons:

Something’s weird with the pipes and water- at least in my room on the 2nd floor. It sounded like a toilet upstairs was running for hours at night. The water took a long time to heat up in the morning and only got to lukewarm. But the showers’ hot water was just fine the day before when I arrived. The pressure is low so I had to stand very close.

Rooms need a larger waste bin. It looks the size of a Kleenex box and a pain to access under the sink. Yes, there’s a big bin in the hallway for sorting recycling. But that won’t take large non-recyclable waste, like packaging made of mixed materials or worse yet- kid’s dirty diapers.

Sunday’s breakfast buffet’s had tasty food and had vegan options, but was a logistical mess. Crowds streamed in just as we sat down with our food. Then, it was endless long lines and running out of things due to mismanagement and lack of proper equipment. Details below.

First, food safety was sacrificed for aesthetics and presentation. There’s no sneeze guards over *anything. Also, hot cooked foods should be kept in chafing dishes (not charming cast iron pots) to maintain safe temperatures.

*Serving the buffet from a counter against the wall created one long, slow food line. Having two small buffet islands, placed mid-room, would have allowed access from both sides and reduce waiting.

*Pre-setting tables with cutlery and mug was a waste of time and utensils because… it’s a buffet. Guests go to the food line first and grabbed cutlery there. They later pushed aside the pre-setting which contributed to running out of utensils and cups later.

*As it got busy, staff couldn’t keep up with clearing tables.

*Guests couldn’t have coffee or tea with their breakfast because they ran out of clean mini-French presses. Also water in the kettles kept running out and there’s no faucets in the dining area to refill them ourselves. They had interesting loose leaf teas, but I didn’t get to try them. Maybe invest in a multifunctional coffee machine and a hot...

A quick breakdown:

Rooms are okay. A little tight. Beds are quite poor quality, probably the least comfortable of any I’ve used in Helsinki. Rooms do have a TV with a Chromecast but they are slightly glitchy - we had to move rooms to get one that worked so we could watch a movie. The curtains and blackout blinds were effective and we were able to create a dark space to sleep in even in the Finnish summer. The rooms have very bad sound insulation, as such, you will hear your neighbours and especially the sound of the plumbing or people using the toilet before bed and when people wake up. A kettle is provided but the sinks make it difficult to fill it. The taps have a design that make filling water bottle impractical, despite claims about being environmentally focused. The phone in our room to contact the front desk did not work, it also did not work in the room we were moved to.

The staff were kind and helpful, service times at front desk are slow as the single staff member must serve drinks such as wine whilst also checking people in.

The WiFi is acceptably fast.

The hotel breakfast was okay - I would say inferior to similarly priced rivals and lacked key things I look forward to in Finland such as smoked salmon. I did enjoy the vegan brownie bites and the freshly baked sweet goods in the morning. The coffee was quite bad.

The seating area for breakfast is actually in the hotel lobby - you collect food by the front door and take it to sit down in a space just beyond that, it is not a separate room and I didn’t like that so much.

The location isn’t ideal. It is accessible from the centre by tram for €3.20 and that ticket lasts an hour, which is fine, however that means if you want to eat late (past 8PM on a weekday) your options locally are severely limited and you will need to undergo this travel to eat. There are better placed hotels at the same price point in Helsinki.

The art theme isn’t really all that impressive - each room has an art piece on the wall behind the bed. What was quite funny was it was a photo of the art piece scaled up to the wall. Maybe as a jpeg rather than a high resolution photo as png, and as such the imagery is soft and lacking in resolution, so it looks bad.

Overall, I wouldn’t stay here again, Klaus K, also in the Strawberry group, is better in basically every way for...

Me and my girlfriend recently had the opportunity to stay at AX hotel in Helsinki for two nights, but unfortunately, we were quite disappointed with our experience. The breakfast buffet was particularly underwhelming. The plates provided were ridiculously small, and it was frustrating to see empty food trays scattered everywhere with no immediate refills in sight. The limited food choices available, especially when it came to warm breakfast dishes, left much to be desired.

To make matters worse, the rooms themselves were not well designed. I was surprised to find that there were no proper trash cans, no refrigerator, no wardrobe, and even a lack of proper shelves. These basic amenities are expected in a hotel room and their absence was a major inconvenience.

One of my requests was for a quiet room, yet the hotel placed me directly above the restaurant. The incessant music coming from below was highly disruptive and made it difficult to get a good night's sleep. It seemed as though the hotel was trying to create a trendy, hipster vibe, but they clearly lacked the understanding of how to properly take care of their guests.

While I must admit that the mattresses were comfortable, it simply wasn't enough to outweigh the numerous shortcomings. Given the overall experience, I regret to say that I will not be choosing this hotel again when I visit Helsinki...