Hotel nhow Berlin — Hotel in Berlin

Good day, Shaprina here, I am an American living here in Europe for the past 5 and 1/2 years. My friend and I recently had the opportunity to stay at your hotel for her Birthday weekend 18-20 January 2019. This was my 4th trip to Berlin and the Birthday Girl's 1st. This was both of our 1st time at an nhow hotel. In one word... "Amazing", we was truly pleased with the entire experience.

As the Taxi approached your hotel, my friends face instantly lit up like a Christmas tree, which is a rare sight since she is definitely not a morning person and it was about 9:30am. This is also after being up and traveling since 3am that morning. We walked in and the scene was surreal, My friend instantly commented on the super handsome, brightly smiling and welcoming demeanor of Richie, who was at the Concierge desk. We proceeded to the short line behind the check-in counter. When we were summoned forward by Nebil, he was very delightful and professional with us. I, then explained to him that when I made the reservation, I told the representative that we would be arriving early and needed a room with separate beds. Nebil expressed that there would be an early check-in fee which was fine. As he searched the database for an available room fitting our request, he and I were chatting and I told him that I am a huge fan of the Hard Rock Café’s and Hotel Franchise and nhow reminded me of it. One of the main reasons we booked with your hotel. With that said, we were offered the suite overlooking the water, which ironically was the picture I saw on your advertisement. We were quickly sold even though we had to share a King size bed. This gesture was unexpected and very insightful on Nebil’s part. You now have a lifetime return customer that will use the nhow Hotel’s when available in the area’s that I visit and I travel monthly for work and/or pleasure.

Let us fast forward to Saturday early evening, I went down to the bar with some leftover food we had from the Big Birthday Dinner we had the night prior. I asked the young man behind the bar for assistance to get the food warmed up. I do not recall the bartenders name but, he secured the bag of food and went to the kitchen. He came back very quickly and stated that they cannot warm up the food. He had no other helpful suggestions for me. This is absolutely absurd and unsatisfactory, not to mention very poor customer service. Like, I mentioned earlier I travel often and I often times will have leftovers from restaurants. I have never ever ever been turned away like that or atleast given an option of a microwave being brought to my room. This answer was not acceptable or ok with me. I immediately went to the Check-in desk where Shadeen was on shift. She politely greeted me, I briefly explained to her the situation and what I was trying to accomplish. She said let me see what I can do. She got on the phone with someone (Which I later found out was Richie) and hung after a brief synopsis. She grab the bag and said she will be back shortly. During this time, Richie came out to his desk and we started talking. He was very pleasant, professional and empathic to my immediate need to get my food warmed up. Apparently, he suggested to Shadeen to warm the food up in the employee break area. She came back with the warm food on two plates, utensils, napkins and on a serving tray. The bottom-line, they both went above the normal protocol to assist and demonstrate outstanding customer service. That small gesture that literally took 5mins meant a great deal to the Birthday girl and I.

To sum this all up, we want to Thank you and your phenomenal staff Nebil, Richie and Shadeen for making this my friend’s best time since coming to Germany. She is definitely not a fan of the lack of customer service she has experienced here thus far. These little acts of professionalism and kindness made her Birthday weekend memorable in a very positive way. Please extend to the 3 named staff members Many Thanks again. I may see you’ll again if I come to CSD Berlin...

In full disclosure, I build hotels for a living. I cannot help but judge them for the best and worst tendencies whenever I go on vacation. I am not a hotel critic, I'm just a general contractor who has built many of them in New York.

I'd like to start our low review with the positives, as there were some. First and foremost, the location of this hotel is great if your plan is to spend time at the clubs. It's within walking distance of some of the awesome area clubs and parties. There is also a really handy S-Bahn stop that takes you pretty much right to Museum Island. The hotel finishes are very chic, and VERY pink. We didn't try any of the amenities (bar, restaurant, guitar rental, etc) since we spent most of our time outside the hotel. That's important, because we really only needed a bed and a bathroom, and felt we didn't even quite get that.

We switched from a junior suite at an expensive hotel downtown ($240/night), and paid about $40 less/night for a Junior Suite at Nhow Berlin, since we wanted to be closer to the bars and clubs. We were expecting comparable-to-slightly-lower quality. We had to book our trip through American Express, as the payment portal on Nhow's website wouldn't work. Even using a VPN to "fake" being in Germany wouldn't work, already a bad sign.

When we checked in, it was not mentioned we were in a smoking room, so our room smelled incredibly strongly of cigarettes. The walls were scuffed, there were consistently small bugs (and a large moth) fluttering around, and the bathroom door never stayed closed. My wife and I don't really like to make a fuss, so we just rolled with it.

Speaking of the bathroom: the door to the toilet is shared with the shower, so you can only ever close one or the other. Our bidet leaked every time we used it, leaving a big puddle on the floor, and we found a random plumbing end cap in the bathroom that for the life of us (despite me walking around for about 30 minutes checking every plumbing connection), couldn't find where it went. It's under the sink in 122, in case the hotel reads this and finds where it goes?

The bed just wasn't very comfortable either. The mattress felt cheap, and overly firm, in the way that spring mattresses with no padding on top feel. We didn't really get a single night's restful sleep because we couldn't get comfortable.

But for all these foibles, there was one, truly terrible, sin that my wife and I just couldn't get over. Literally every time we went out, our room keys broke. On the third day of our stay, after having to get my key remade for the third time, I finally asked what was going on. The guy at the desk said it probably was because I kept my key near my phone, or in my wallet near my credit card. I'm sorry, Nhow Hotel Group, but that's just terrible. Where else are people supposed to put their keys if not in their wallets or in their pocket with their phones?

Nhow Berlin, I'm only so hard on you in this review because money just seems so badly spent. Everything in our room felt like form over function. It felt like the celebrity designer (Karim Rashid) who designed this hotel never gave any consideration to the fact that people would actually live in this place. The TV cabinet that pivots to let you watch TV in bed or on the couch, or the curved glass wall at the bathroom, are expensive fixtures that could've been money better spent on a comfortable mattress or key cards that worked.

This is a gorgeous hotel. As an event space, party space, or bar, it's awesome. As a hotel room?...

This was the worst hotel stay I have ever experienced. ||Our last night in Berlin, my girlfriend, our 11-year-old son, and I stayed at the Nhow in Friedrichshain. From around 23:00, we were disturbed by loud noises from upstairs, which escalated into screaming and shouting at about 01:00. ||We tried to ignore it, hoping it would be over quickly, but the noise kept returning, and we kept trying to fall asleep again. We also had a little boy with us, so we did our best to do nothing and just hope everything was okay. Most guests wouldn’t go immediately to the desk in such a situation. ||When it all escalated again at 4:45 am, we hoped it would end soon, but it only got worse. After four hours of being awake, I called the front desk. The girl on the phone just said they would check it and then hung up. |The screaming stopped temporarily, like it did all night, but 45 minutes later, it resumed and was followed shortly after by fighting. ||My girlfriend then went downstairs to report the situation again and ask for a refund, as we had been unable to sleep all night. They told her they couldn’t do anything and that they weren’t allowed to evict anyone. Nobody came upstairs, and it was already 6 am. |After another period of ongoing chaos, I called again, now really upset, because nothing had been addressed. The staff only appologized but said they couldn't kick the guests out. At that moment, my son was crying and scared from all the yelling, shouting, and fighting. ||Our entire night and stay were ruined. In the morning my girlfriend went down again very tired from not sleeping and angry because nothing was done about it. The people at the frontdesk just said they also wanted to check out the story of the guest above us as if we lied about the whole night and called, go down, called again , go down and staying up all night for fun or so. Then my girlfriend got mad of course. And Said we would leave bad review on the internet and left. ||Later on, I also sent them an email with our account of what happened. The reply I received was unbelievable—full of contradictions and completely opposite to what they told us that night. In their email, they claimed they were with the guests and told them to vacate the room when they continued, despite having told us twice that evicting them was not possible. They also stated that someone went upstairs, but when that person was there, everything was quiet; now they tell us they were really at the door. In the morning, they said they first had to talk to the guests to see what they did. So, the email was filled with conflicting statements.| |At the end, they even accused my girlfriend of trying to blackmail them by threatening to leave a bad review. To say this after a sleepless, stressful night with our scared son is incredibly unfair and shows how little they care about their guests. ||We have never had such a terrible hotel experience. Our son was frightened by the yelling, fighting and loud noises. The only explanation was this “ The hotel itself provided every service you booked and we acted on the troublemakers who are merely guests of our hotel.”||Providing every hotel service? That’s a complete joke. We didn’t get any sleep, our son didn’t feel safe, and nothing was...