The Hotel Maria Helsinki — Hotel in Helsinki sub-region

Not A Five Star Hotel:

Overview: I stayed in the hotel Maria for 3 nights for a conference. I chose the hotel Maria for a five star experience as Google told me it was a five star hotel. However, the experience I’ve had with the service and oddity’s when it came to the amenities made the hotel seem vastly inferior to other five star hotels across the world.

Rooms: let’s start on the good. The rooms are well maintained. And they are clean. The only issue is the desperate attempt to seem more luxury than it actually is. From fake plants to fake marble. This decreases the quality of the room rather than increases it.

My biggest issue would be the water pressure. The shower pressure is utterly atrocious. And I am sure it is artificially done using limiters on the shower head to save money on water. Which is unusual for five star hotels.

Service: One of the bigger issues of the hotel. The service is not nearly of five star standard. It is more comparable to a three star hotel.

When the rooms were cleaned the cleaners left clothing lying around in the bathroom and hadn’t replaced the used towels.

The cleaners had not replaced the tissues and still water which led to several issues at night.

At night I ordered two bottles of still water via room service. When the two water bottles came 30 minutes later I was surprised to see the bill.

The bill was €45 for two 500ml bottles of still water. This was completely obscene and the result of a broken revenue model by the hotel which charges a surplus of €20 (I believe) for any and all service. This is completely unacceptable for a five star hotel which service should be a given in the rooms prices.

Next, I asked the person who brought us the water bottles for a tissue box since ours hadn’t been replaced by housekeeping that day.

Instead, 30 minutes later he came back with toilet paper. I looked at him. And clamp corrected him saying we want tissues to blow our noses and pointed at the empty tissue box.

30 minutes later he came back with food napkins. About five napkins in a pack used at caffès.

At this point I gave up and took the napkins.

Overall the service is not comparable to any five star hotel I’ve stayed at. It would be at a 3 or 4 star hotel levels.

Spa: This was the biggest issue and the reason why I would not stay at the hotel Maria ever again.

The spa is the hotels selling point. Being a clean well designed spa being the reason I booked the rooms.

I was staying in a premier Deluxe room costing around €430 per night.

When we arrived to the spa the person told us “our room didn’t include spa access”

Confused, I asked her what she meant.

She told us not all rooms have access to the spa. And upon further inspection I later learned that every room has two separate options. With and some without spa assess. Even standard rooms which were vastly cheaper than what I was paying.

This is a complete and utter joke. The spa is part of the hotel experience. Charging additional amounts to guests staying at the spa at a five star hotel is completely unheard of and utterly ridiculous.

To add further insult to injury. I later learned ANYONE can assess the spa is they pay the fee.

So, hotel guests spending hundreds per day are treated the same as people not staying at the hotel.

I stayed in the hotel Maria mainly for the spa. I was new to Finland and wanted to try the Finnish Sauna experience.

I now regret staying at the hotel Maria after learning I could have stayed at another better hotel and just visited the sauna with a day pass.

So the spa at the hotel Maria isn’t even a selling point.

Food: We had breakfast once at the hotel Maria and I was impressed with the options of food at the buffet and the menus options.

The taste of the food was great.

Conclusion: The hotel Maria would be a good hotel if it was branded as a four or maybe three star hotel. However, the bizarre add ons for everything and the service is not five star...

What a wonderful hotel! I arrived solo and my husband joined me. We had booked well ahead of time and I reserved the Bridal Suite because it looked so great in the official photos. The suite was incredible, as were the amenities. It is a very high-tech room with lots of convenient options I had never encountered in a hotel room before. A staff member brought me up to the room and showed me all the features, which was very helpful.||I visited the spa my first night and that was a lovely experience. I highly recommend it.||There were a few hiccups--the air conditioner was not working the first night, and it was unusually hot in Helsinki (I spent one day walking around in shorts) but the staff moved me into another room and then back again once it was fixed.||Although the room and amenities are top notch, it was the staff that really shone. I left the hotel to go on an Arctic Cruise and had no connectivity for about 3 weeks, and I hope I remember all the names of the wonderful people I interacted with. The front desk had Alex, Flavio, Elias, and another sweet person who's name escapes me. The backup help was, I think, Robert and Minntu. The breakfast was managed (I think) by Anna, and Otto was often my waitperson. But everyone was very helpful, and I hope I got the names correct.||Speaking of breakfast--the food was lovely and plentiful. The buffet had so much food it was impossible to sample it all. The lattes were delicious, the fresh fruit was ripe and sweet, and it is the first time I ever had butter with egg in it--turns out it is a local specialty. But the star, for me, was the......oatmeal! I had a bowl every day, and it was without doubt the best oatmeal that I have ever had. I would love directions on how it was made; it was sublime!||I also loved the hotel's location. Some other the other top-tier hotels are in a much busier and nosier part of town. The Maria is in a more residential area, which is very nice, and the area has lots of local shops that allows for fabulous window shopping. It was still very close to all the hubbub of the city center, so easy to walk around, but it allowed for a respite when needed. ||I think that part of the reason why I fell in love with love with Helsinki was because of my stay at the Maria. If I am able to return to the city I would love to stay there again. I can't imagine a better place to stay or a...

The Hotel Maria is a brand new, opened in December 2023, 5-star luxury hotel. Clearly aiming, and currently succeeding, to be the best hotel in Helsinki.

What makes The Hotel Maria such a unique and special experience at the moment is the level of service. I am genuinely impressed by how this team is managed. Maria clearly has an ownership or management that prioritizes high-level personal service, something very rare around these parts of the world. I honestly commend them for the effort to staff the hotel at a high density and find and train the talent to execute a great level of service.

The staff is friendly, attentive, courteous, and very professional whilst maintaining a personal connection. During our visit, we had both special requests and a personal celebration, and the staff really went the extra mile to acknowledge and accommodate us. I've seen ultra luxury hotels struggle at less.

The property is built to the highest standard, and even with a basic category room, our room was well-appointed with a separate seating area and a massive bathroom with a bathtub. There are very few rooms per floor so we found it to be very quiet. Construction is still going on during the daytime, and only one of the three buildings with guest rooms are currently open. The location is in central Helsinki but slightly off from the main center in a more quiet but upscale area with some decent restaurants around.

The main amenity of the hotel is the aptly named Maria spa. It’s a luxurious and well-sized hotel spa with a lounge pool, a larger hot-tub, a cold-plunge pool, and both wet and dry saunas. There’s also a striking relax area with a spa-bar built-in under a glass atrium covering the former courtyard.

From my one experience staying here so far, Maria easily outperforms its closest competitors (Kämp or St:George). As such, I’d say it’s a very interesting addition to the Helsinki hotel scene, and I’m excited to see if they can maintain this high level of service and how their competitors will react.

If you’re in Helsinki, the Maria is a must-visit.

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