Brim Hótel — Hotel in Reykjavik

I'm going to start with the fact that this will have to do a lot with expectations. This was booked for us by Fleetway Travel, a UK based company, which apparently runs scams on tourists who are either lazy or didn't check every part of the reservation. They informed us that the regular hotel they provided as part of of the package was sold out so they "upgraded" us to this better hotel. In no sense of the word is this an upgrade to anything ever meant to have the word hotel in it.

First the good: The staff is extremely friendly and courteous, and even the night guy, whose actual first day on the job it was, did his best to accommodate our request for breakfast coupons, which he couldn't find right away. The bed sheets were clean and beds were comfortable. Included "continental" breakfast (surprise, it's not actually in the hotel)

Now the rest: -The rooms has an odor, probably related to the dirty carpet that looks like it was placed there back in the early 1900s. -The bathroom, which at first glance looks like some from a seedy motel and literally has no place to put a toothbrush, has its own odor which meant we had to keep that door closed at all times, lest it seep into the sleeping space, making it impossible to breath. This sounds easy, but the door was so noise to actually close, that taking a bathroom trip at night guaranteed the other person would be awake from the door opening and closing twice. -The shower has the feel of someone holding a mostly empty watering can over you. Washing off soap or trying to wash shampoo out is useless, there is not enough water under pressure coming out. -There is no thermostat in the room. When we wanted to make the room less hot when we checked in, we found out that was not an option. -The window in the room, which had to be open because of the heat and smell is held by hinges that felt like they would snap off if you touched them. -The radiator made loud whistling noises at night, but appeared to not actually give off any heat. -Trying to call the front desk to ask for an extra blanket, we found that there is no phone in the room. That's when we noticed there's no TV in the room either. Not a big deal as we're not there to watch TV, but still, sometimes local news or programs are fun to watch for a few minutes when waking up. -After having to go downstairs to ask for extra blankets (there is no closet in the room), the clerk came back sometime later with two thin covers. Better than nothing. -There is no safe in the room. I don't think I've ever had anything stolen from hotels in my travels, but I like to keep the passports and some cash safe, just in case. -Don't bother asking about a gym in this place. They don't have it and looked at me like I was crazy. -The included breakfast, which we can down for the first morning in our t-shirts, turns out to be about a 3 minute walk around the corner. Not a big deal, but when it's 27 degrees outside and snowing, it makes a difference. So be ready to get fully dressed, pick up the coupons from the front desk of the hotel and then go for a short walk to a small bar/restaurant that will serve the breakfast. The food is tasty and the staff is very friendly, but the orange juice is almost undrinkable. Luckily Icelandic water is amazing anywhere in the county, including out of the sink, unless the sink happens to stink, like in this hotel.

Overall, we ended up cutting our losses, and moved to another actual hotel after two nights in this hole. This does not merit the word hotel in any sense of the word. A hostel? sure. A motel? Maybe. Definitely not a hotel. If you need a place to crash, and don't care as long as it has a bed, this place will do. It even has a shared public kitchen that you can bring your own food to cook in. Otherwise, stay away.

In another seemingly shady move, the hotel has two names It shows up as Reykjavik Hotel Center, which is very similar to better hotels in downtown Reykjavik, but when you pull up to it, the name says Brim hotel. Even the bus and tour operators didn't know where it was by...

If I could rate Brim Hotel 0 stars I would have. This was hands down my worst hotel experience ever. There is no service desk, it is self check-in, and if you have any questions or concerns the few individuals cleaning the rooms hardly know English.

OUR SHOWER DID NOT WORK!!!!! The shower would almost instantly reach temperatures that you could not stand in, even when having the dial on the lowest temperature. My girlfriend got a heat rash on her leg from this. I attempted to reach out to the owner or some sort of management on several occasions but no one ever got back to me. We ended up having to shower with our sink or when visiting blue/sky lagoon.

The walls are paper thin and you can hear every time someone slams a door (very often, the doors here are not good). No tv in the room, hair dryer, or air conditioning here either.

THERE IS LITTLE TO NO PARKING. There are about 7-8 parking spots in front of the hotel. The hotel holds many more guests than this would lead you to believe. Most days, we had to leave our car in a bus zone in front of the hotel or in front of another building where there are tow away signs.

BAD LOCATION. Aside from it being a 30 minute walk to the city (60 min to the upper peninsula), we were nearly carjacked at an intersection two blocks from the hotel. A woman ran up to our car while we were at a busy red light and started pulling at our door and almost smashed the window. Luckily I had the doors locked and got lucky speeding away through the intersection.

Lastly, the owner attempted to state that they canceled our stay because of an “invalid card number”. I fully paid for the stay up front so even if my card number changed, this should not have affected our stay. Two nights into our stay, a house cleaner knocked on our door and said “time to checkout”. I had to try and bridge the language barrier to let her know we were there for 5 more nights. You can imagine how that went.

Please avoid this hotel at all costs. The price is not at all worth the experience. Like I said, this was the worst experience I have ever had at a hotel and was definitely the lowlight of our trip. We dreaded coming back to this place each day. Save yourself some peace of mind and spend a little extra for a...

My dad and I were there for a father/daughter vacation in February during the Icelandic Beer Festival and MY GOODNESS we loved it! The staff were BEYOND helpful to us with suggestions of where to go, tours to take (and ones that we could easily leave out), and recommendations of what to do with our time. We wanted to mention them all by name and I lost the paper it was written down on!! AAHHH!!!! We liked them so much that we extended an invitation to visit our homes in Canada.

The hotel itself was basic and comfortable (bring ear plugs if you're a light sleeper, this is the only reason I took off a star), had WiFi, and the breakfast place around the corner (breakfast was included) was exactly what we wanted. Included breakfast was also very helpful because it's quite expensive over there. Don't forget the tickets for breakfast...we didn't realize we needed to hand in tickets and we angered the restaurant chef (he was apologetic after he realized it was just a mistake on our part).

From that location you can walk downtown, to the waterfront, and even to the whale museum right on the other end of town quite easily. We walked about 18-20km/day around the town, enjoyed the restaurants, and saved ourselves some $ by buying sandwiches from the grocery store when we went on excursions.

We loved our time AND the staff there were our absolute favourites!!! We miss them and hope they...