Bob W Oosterpark — Hotel in Amsterdam

When I entered Bob W. I was shocked to see how empty and cold it was. This is a clear disadvantage of not having a reception desk. Nobody to offer you a warm welcome. |||Then I went up to room 204 and when I entered my room there was NO WINDOW apart from a skylight near the front door. There were 4 walls staring me down, a bed propped in a corner, an air conditioner that could not get lower than 20 degrees and a ceiling window that would not open. Making the room extremely hot and claustrophobic and thus not suited for sleeping. If you want to promote your hotel as a healty, climate-neutral, double carbon offset (I wonder how), and sustainable, then the well-being of your guests should be priority number 1. |||Bob W. promotes itself as: |" Although Bob is usually away trekking up a glacier or hitchhiking across a continent, his team of professional hospitality superheroes is here for you day and night to make sure you have a 5-star stay."|"His holy grail are places that blend the consistent quality of a hotel with the authentic flair and affordability of a host’s home."|"When you sleep with Bob, you always know what to expect: an awesome location in a handpicked neighbourhood, interiors created by local designers, and a commitment to sustainability."|||So you expect a lot more for €214,02 per night and a 4 star rating on Booking.com, where you also advertise the standard 2 bedroom option with pictures of rooms with windows and that can also open! Just check the pictures… |||I therefore expected all of the above and not getting it, I got in touch with the customer service by phone and by app. Very customer friendly! |In both situations your team was unable to help or provide any help nor any form of sympathy for the situation. None at all! Which for a 5-star stay, a 4 star on booking and a lot of talk about doing the best for your customer. |||Adding insult to injury, the automated whatsapp messages were also terribly annoying as while I am discussing an issue with your team, I get a welcome message (in Dutch) : "Ben je goed aangekomen in het appartement... beantwoord dit bericht en laat me weten of iets minder dan 5 sterren waardig is... " Well yes, it was and is way less than 5 stars! |||The day after I informed the “staff” we would not stay at the “hotel”, we did not stay in the "appartement" (ridiculous term for a room of 3x3 with no window nor kitchen, nor sitting area)... I get the message: "Hi Yann, It's almost time to head out!". If your "efficient" systems had been well prepped and the customer service of a 5 star stay upheld, then I would not have received this message. |||Bob offered me a few days later a 10% discount on future stay. Well, you guessed it, I will not stay there which I informed them and asked for a 70% to 100% refund. It took them 7 days to react offering 30%. I said no, and it took them a reminder and 13 days to come back to me… |||So here we are, giving a negative review and advising you to avoid Bob W. … whenever...

REVIEW UPDATE:

I have come to update this review because I have to say, despite the negative situation that occurred - the follow up was excellent and I am very appreciative to Sebastiano who handled this situation with grace.

We were refunded in full for the day in question when there was an issue, and Sebastiano who is the Netherlands Bob W manager reached out to me to speak directly to resolve the issue and personally apologise.

Not only this, but Sebastiano put in place a full internal review and explained to me what went wrong, and put new mitigation measures in place to ensure that this would never happen again to any of his guests. You can tell this is someone who truly cares about his guests and he was very kind when dealing with us.

I would not hesitate to stay at Bob W in future after this experience. The location and rooms are beautiful and they clearly have great staff in the head offices.

—————

Absolute loved this hotel when we arrived but we had an awful time by the end.

The room keys are fully digital on your phone and we went out on Saturday night and our phone died. When we returned to the hotel the front door of the hotel had been locked and no one was answering the emergency line that they happily advertise on the front the hotel as being monitored 24/7.

It was -3 degrees outside, we spent hours trying to get in, paid a local publican €20 to let us charge our phone so we could ring this emergency number, which the voicemail box will condescendingly tell you to only call if it’s an emergency but never bother to answer, and we had to wake up other hotel guests to let us into the hotel because of this massive failure of the non existent front desk.

They admitted their mistake in the morning and offered us free breakfast to make up for it but it really doesn’t even come close to making up for the fact we could have died in the temperatures outside. I was moments away from ringing the police because I just couldn’t figure out...

We stayed here as it was the only place available in our price range for a last-minute holiday, and we were really pleasantly surprised. The room was spacious and had nice decor, and the little touches like refillable water bottles and a tote bag were nice. We especially liked how the TVs were setup so we could stream from our devices and cast onto the TV when we were relaxing in the evenings - however, the TVs were a bit finicky at times and needed to be turned off and on multiple times to fix. My one complaint is that there was coffee, tea and sugar but no milk to use, and no mini fridge in the room - we didn't feel comfortable leaving anything in the communal fridge.

The service was good as it was clear that we could contact via Whatsapp, and the check-in/-out was easy since we didn't have to deal with a reception like a typical hotel. Being able to use a code and scan from our phone to access the room was great as we didn't need to look after a key.

The building and location was lovely and really near to Oosterpark, but it was quite far from the main things in the centre. This is reflected in the price, with this hotel being cheaper than others, but it would've been great to have some information on the public transport options in the area provided in the rooms - we ended up walking instead which was a nice way to explore, but worth keeping in mind if you need somewhere more accessible or are concerned about spending extra money on public transport/taxis. It also says free gym access is included, but it's actually access to a "boutique fitness studio" that exclusively does HIIT classes. We felt this was a bit misleading as we couldn't find much info on this before our visit, as a fitness studio is not the same as a gym. Had it been an actual gym, this would've been an amazing extra.

Overall we would definitely consider a Bob W. hotel again in the future since they have locations in...