Hotel Jansen Schinkel — Hotel in Amsterdam

To avoid. Due to an unfortunate event (I am quoting their expression), they did not let me find my access card to my room in a late check in. Despite I call them and email them in advance, and got a double assurance that everything was ready, I found myself without my card to access the room at 1am in the night. The security would have costed 75 Euros to intervene (assuming that my room was actually available). After several emails, and almost 20 days later, they finally answered that they refuse to compensate for the night(s) for which I pay in advance, for which I did not have my key card due to their mistake.

Furthermore, the rooms are small. The kitchen is shared between 20/30 users, and the first public transport access is 15minutes away. The common restaurant (mama) has quite restricted opening hours and the menu is rather limited. Overall, It has not been a comfortable stay.

@@@@ TO ANSWER TO THEIR COMMENT @@@@

We don't think it's fair Enrico to leave us with such a review. We feel the need to explain your situation from our perspective. You checked out of the hotel, we did your room check and you handed your passes in, despite being told not to if you wanted to return. THIS STATEMENT IS FALSE. I followed the instructions. The room was paid for all the period. Furthermore, it doesn't have anything to do with the problem. For your mistake, I had been left out!

So in our perception you left. I EMAILED and PHONE CALLED to say I was coming back, you confirmed that was fine. TI do not care about your perception when I cannot access to the room for which I paid. It is like you go to a restaurant, they take your money and they don't serve you food because their perception is that you already ate??!! A Normal company will MINIMUM give you back the money their received for the food they did not provide, a serious company would try to make it up apologising. For WHOEVER READS THIS, STAY AWAY FROM THIS PEOPLE. It is not just a mistake (ok, it happens), they are supporting the ridiculous and this is a great example of how customers are here treated.

When you did decide to come back, you could have phoned security to let you in, but you didn't. Instead, you chose to go to another hotel. YOU ASK 75EUROS for that service and I had NO SECURITY that my room was available at that point.

When we did offer you your room back, you decided to stay in the other hotel and expected us to pay for that. YOU OFFERED THE ROOM WHEN I DID NOT NEED IT ANY LONGER.

That's strange, right? UTTERLY STRANGE. You call yourself as 'hotel', you let a person sleep in the street at -5'C, and you do not even take responsibility. Nor even a compensation for the service that you did not provide and for which you received the money for! We are not even talking about the damages given here! I wish you the worst...

Hotel Jansen was a decent stay for me. The staff is very friendly and accomodating, especially Geraldine, who is an amazing manager and very warm hearted. When I had troubles with my first room (unclean and messy) she didn’t hesitate to move me into a cleaner, larger room, which was very appreciated. I must also speak the praises of Mamas’ staff, which are friendly and enjoy a bit of banter.

My main concerns regarding this hotel mostly have to do with its organization and physical amenities. The room I was in was big, but unfortunately the bathroom was quite packed, and there is no in-room sink apart from the bathroom. However, there is a dishwasher in the shared kitchen for common use. I also had problems with the desk provided, which is essentially made to cause you splinters being made from recycled wood chippings (?). Not very fun. However, my main problem was with the hygiene. The kitchen is shared with over 20 people in every floor, which can get messy especially when the majority of tenants are young adults who are in their first years of living alone with responsibilities. It was sometimes unfathomably smelly, a reek which emanated through the kitchen doors and gave you a nice, stinky welcome home while you were walking to your room. Of course, I can’t blame Hotel Jansen for this, but the people in it. However I do think there could have been a better job cleaning it, and that the ‘20+ people sharing a kitchen’ idea is lacklustre in design. I opted for a weekly cleaning of my room for an added 40€ a month, which was quite good for a while but after the first 2 weeks all that was done to my room was to tidy the kitchen table and vacuum SOME of the floor. When I was gone to my home for two weeks, the cleaner hadn’t even come once by the time I came back. After I complained there was a marginal improvement, but it still felt like a bad deal. Another issue was the thickness of the room walls. This meant that you could hear the person in the room next to you fire up their coffee machine, play music or even flush the toilet. More importantly for me, it meant that even a weak gust of wind would make the outer walls of the room tremor, something that significantly affected my sleep quality. Some stormy nights it felt like I was living inside a shipyard container out in sea. The wifi in this room was not terrible but not great either, since there’s only one router in the kitchen the connection would often cut out. To be fair though, i was in the room furthest from the kitchen, so it’s probably fine for most. The view from the room is quite nice, and the whole hotel does have a good vibe going for it.

I just wish the owners wouldn’t cheap out on some essential features, because the staff and management really deserve most...

Unfortunately our experience at this hotel was significantly affected by a serious issue: rats. We personally saw rats inside the hotel building at night. Fortunately we did not see any in our room, but halfway through our stay we saw one on the kitchen counter. I have a severe allergy to rats and even a single hair in the food could trigger a dangerous reaction like angioedema. Because of this we could no longer take the risk of cooking in the shared kitchen. For more than 10 days we had to eat at restaurants and fast food places, which was expensive, inconvenient and affected the quality of our meals. Eventually it became impossible to tolerate and we decided to leave three days earlier than planned.

We emailed the hotel management to report that there was a rat in the kitchen and to explain that I have an allergy. We asked what actions they planned to take or how they were going to handle the situation. Sadly we never received a reply. Not even a simple apology or acknowledgment.

The management blamed the rats on a nearby bakery that recently closed and on guests leaving food in the sinks. However reviews from 8 months ago already mention rats so clearly this is not a new problem. And honestly I do not think a rat would show up just for a small piece of food left in a sink. There is a restaurant on the ground floor which is a far more likely place for rats to be attracted to.

In the last days of our stay we saw traps placed in every corner and I truly hope they help solve the problem.

On the positive side there is a good bicycle parking area. If you ride a bike the location is great. A grocery store is only 3 minutes away and public transport is about 5 minutes away. The room itself had everything needed for a comfortable stay. The fridge was especially convenient. However we stayed on the ground floor and there was a lot of dust. We had to wipe all surfaces every day or they would get covered in a thick layer of dust. I am not sure why this happened but it might be related to being on the ground floor.

Overall until the rat issue is properly addressed and management becomes more responsive to guests I cannot recommend this place. If there were no rats I would say this is nearly a perfect option even for a longer stay for two people. But the rats are a serious problem and they...