Meliá Berlin — Hotel in Berlin

Let me begin this review by stating that I like this hotel. It is very well maintained, the staff are beyond friendly and helpful, and it is perfectly situated right in the heart of the city. This being said, there are a few downsides to this hotel, which I will get to in a moment. You should probably consider these before you actually decide to book a room here, as they may affect your stay.||To begin with, I want to discuss the location. As mentioned, this hotel is perfectly located right in the heart of Berlin. You are easy walking distance to Museum Island, to Berlin Tower, The Bauhaus, cathedrals, shopping, and dining. Plus, you are located right along the Spree River||This brings me to their rooms. I really suggest that you book a river-view room. It really makes the whole lodging experience so much better. You open up your window, and there it is, the Spree River. All of the flavor of Berlin flowing right at your feet.||As I am speaking about the rooms, there are a few things you need to consider. The rooms are all very well-designed and they're very well-maintained. They're very clean, and every time that you leave your room in the morning you can be sure that it will be made-up by the time you returned.||One of the downsides to this hotel, however, and this fact really blows my mind, is that they do not have USB connections in the room. Thus, there is no place to charge your phone, your computer, or anything else unless you have an AC adapter. It's almost hard to believe that a hotel, in this day and age, would not install USB ports. But the Meliá does not.||This brings me to one of the negative points about this establishment, providing me with a real bone to pick with this hotel. I live in the States, and expecting there to be USB ports in the room, I didn't bring a European electrical adapter. I have traveled the globe for over forty years and there has never been one time, at one hotel, that I asked for a power converter that it was not happily provided to me (for free). This hotel, however, does not provide those. The only way I could get a power converter, that fed into a USB cable, was to buy one from the concierge. I really think this NOT a good policy! I mean, come on! With the price of the rooms, and the level of the service this hotel supposedly provides, the guest should at least be provided with a power converter if they need one.||The other thing I would like to discuss about this hotel is that you should really get a room that offers their Lounge Service. Their Lounge Service is really a good thing. Not excellent. But pretty good. Yes, with this service, your room will cost a little bit more, but you will provided with breakfast every morning and snacks throughout the day and well into the evening.||The Lounge changes their offerings at various times during the day. In the morning they offer breakfast style food. And, it's pretty expansive. Not like a full-on breakfast buffet, offered by some hotels, but a nice integrated offerings of various breakfast items.||During the day, they offer appetizers. Plus, all day long and into the night you can grab bottled waters, coolers, and beer.||In the evening, they provide what they call a pre-dinner offering. With this, the guest are provided with very nice appetizers that are very well prepared. I've noticed that many guests come in there to eat their entire dinner from the Lounge. You can do that if you want. But, that's not really my style.||During the afternoon and into the evening, they also offer a nice selection of wine and self-made cocktails.||The other minor beef I have with the hotel, and it's kind of amusing, is the fact that for the first three nights of my week-long stay, they did not give us washcloths. But, on the fourth day, amazingly the washcloth did appear. Why didn't they leave washcloths every night, I do not know? One would think that would be standard protocol. Then, the next thing that happened is on the fifth night, the washcloths were gone. So, I don't know what's going on with that?||Additionally, in terms of their housekeeping services, they have a note posted in each room that if you need a toothbrush or a razor they will provide them to you. We had run out of toothpaste, so we thought instead of going and buying some from one of the local shops, maybe we could get some from the hotel, since they were offering it. We called housekeeping services a total of seven times over two days and not one time did anybody answer. Thus, I'm not quite sure what they're offering, or who is manning their stations, but we were not provide with what they claim to offer.||All this being said, I have good things to say about this hotel. Yes, there is a few downsides, but overall staying at the Meliá was a very...

Excited to experience "The Level" again we booked Melia Berlin out of many other options of hotels. Sadly, the experience did not meet the same level of hospitality or experience as our previous stays in other Melia Hotels and the level. First of all we did check in online,and was informed you go straight to the "Priority Check In" upon arriving to the hotel, no need to que. So we did. Just to be ignored and then asked to come to the other counter where the Front Office Agent was, after he helped some other guests of course. Why have a priority lane for Melia Rewards guest and Level guests if its not attended?. Finally he gave us the key and we went to the room. 5 min after we got in, someone knocked on our door and wanted to do a Turn down service. 5 minutes!? Give us some time to settle down first, and It was 6pm in the evening. Ridiculous. First I didn't understand him as he was speaking German and I didn't, and I tried to acknowledge him that I speak English, but without any response. He even was facing the other way 5sec after I opened the door, not looking at me. Not very nice. No smiles. The lounge itself was ok. But the assortment of the snacks that they use in their advertising for the level consist of small bags of chips, and then some sweet cake in the afternoon and/or some dry sandwiches. that's it. Hardly any smiles. The breakfast was quite simple actually, and it was hard to get if anyone was going to serve you coffee or not, and after a while someone came to ask if we wanted eggs, omelette or such.. when almost finish the breakfast. No control over newly arrived breakfast guests by the staff either. Assortment of soft drinks and wine and prosecco was like you expected, the regular ones. Sure it's nice to be able to sit in an calm lounge and drink for free. But you pay for more then that. And that's were Melia Berlin does not deliver. I think, that it might be a different experience depending if you visit a city or a vacation resort. But still, you pay the same. In Melia The level in Spain the staff was greeting us when we arrived, we were given drinks while they prepared the check-in in the designated Level reception, they followed us to our room, showed us the lounge and explained how everything worked.There we felt special and welcomed and thats what the "Level" experience is all about, and what you pay a little extra for. We did not had that feeling here. No one hardly smiled, meet the staff In the corridor and no one greets you or even smiled. Felt like they prioritized German guests as they was very talkative to them and smiled a lot, and international guests are not as important. So if you have experienced the level before and liked it, please be prepared to be disappointed if you choose this in Melia Berlin. And don't...

This is a very nice hotel in an excellent location. The rooms were of reasonable size and always clean.The employees are very friendly and always willing to assist. The hotel has an excellent restaurant and on the ground floor there is the famous tapas bar where you can enjoy a drink accompanied by some live music. The train, subway, metro and bus stations are located 1 minute walk away which is very convenient. The German public transit is exceptional and always on time. The wife and I bought a weekly public transit ticket and used it for the entire duration of our stay in Berlin. There is absolutely no need to get a taxi though the hotel can always book one for you if you require one. There are plenty of authentic German cuisine restaurants close to the hotel (right on the banks of the river). I only have one complaint which for me is quite serious though for someone else might sound trivial. The hotel WiFi situation...First of all it is not free. It's around 5 Euros a day (8 to 9 US dollars). However this is not my main problem. I understand that you can't always get free things in every hotel. My concern is with the wifi service as a whole. The hotel WiFi is offered from T-Mobile and it surely isn't designed for the needs of the modern traveller. It would have been fine if we only had a laptop computer that would never leave the room. What Melia fails to understand is that these days people travel with smartphones and tablets that they take OUTSIDE the hotel. Allow me to elaborate. The moment you leave your room you loose the signal. Once you are down the hotel lobby you have to log on to the wifi again using a webpage. The username you are given is Huge and so is the password. I only managed to connect ONE device per created account though I could have been doing something wrong. Yet, since you only get the 20 character (alpha numeric) username & password on a text file during your first loggon it makes it such a hustle to even try to connect a second device. But even for using one device (smartphone) it is such a hustle to log on to the internet every time you return to the hotel. Ridiculous. I have been a guest to various other hotels where you buy wifi but I have to say that the Melia service is by far the worst and most "traveller unfriendly" . For this reason I am afraid to say that I would not be staying at this hotel again. Let me be clear ... This is a great hotel and for someone who doesn't consider that an easy to use wifi service is a necessity it would be a perfect...