Best Western Malmö Arena Hotel — Hotel in Malmö kommun

The staff is very friendly at all times and very competent. I even got very useful information on public transport and trips to the city center. The rooms are small, but clean. So are the bathrooms. Unfortunately, there is only one small window per room and there is no main light from the ceiling, so the rooms are always too dark to offer a good space to do some work. Also, the window can NOT be opened, so the air is used up quickly. A little help is to open the bathroom door. Another con of the small, dark rooms is, that there is no working way to cool the rooms. The A/C panel suggests that you can cool the room 3°C below some temperature displayed (most likely the actual house average?), which does not work. Had 21°C when going to bed, which is much too warm to sleep well, fan was running at maximum, and next morning we even had 22°C. The beds are small, but offer some comfort. Also, even if you wanted to do some office work in your room, construction work starts at 9 am, including hammers, drills and saws and you get the feeling that they are taking down your room walls. Don't even think about sleeping in or something! The breakfast is good, offering a good variety of continental and European options. You might want to do your office work in the lobby, which is spacious, but, especially in the winter, very windy and cold, because construction workers bring in tons of stuff through the front door which will then be left open. Also, the couches look and feel comfy at first sight and sit, but getting up after 2 hours or so is the moment when you regret having chosen them. The only chance to get some emails done is the gym/sauna floor (1st floor), where you find some chairs. Unfortunately, this floor seems to be occupied by events and meetings very often, so you will find yourself in a chair on an inside balcony above the lobby, next to the snack vending machine. Once you're there, you'll find out that the hotel does indeed offer Wifi, but access to the internet is sometimes quite limited, making video calls impossible. If you have some spare time and want to see some touristic highlights, the most common recommendation is "Go to Copenhagen". You can go there by train. Or you book a hotel...

An unfriendly and unhelpful clerk made our initial contact with this hotel quite unpleasant.

We booked a room through an online service and paid online with PayPal. At checkin the clerk asked to see the card we were using to make the booking. We explained several times that we didn't use a card, but PayPal. We also showed him the card that the PayPal account is linked to. Neither satisfied him and he said the card numbers don't match. Further the clerk was incredibly unhelpful and did nothing constructive to resolve the situation, but insisting that we produce a card for him that we don't have.

Fortunately a colleague was available who was much more helpful. The colleague, after talking to somebody on the phone for quite a while, told us to request a refund from the online service, which the hotel would confirm, and pay for the room again at the reception, which we did. We were then given access to the room we booked.

About 20 minutes later the colleague called us, apologized and told us that the clerk made a mistake and that the hotel didn't actually require a card number from us. She refunded the second payment we did at the reception and offered something from the snack and drink selection at the reception.

We haven't heard an apology from the clerk after the mistake was found.

Other than that, the hotel has a nice bar on the top floor, with a good view of Malmö and the Oresund bridge. The breakfast was 4 out of 5 for scrambled eggs that tasted like they were made...

We stayed at this hotel expecting a comfortable 4-star experience, but unfortunately, our stay was full of disappointments. As soon as we entered the room, we noticed dust and hair on the floor, dirty windows, and dust in the bathroom. We requested cleaning, but when we returned several hours later, the room was still dirty, and cleaning cloths had been left on the floor.

To make things worse, the shower hose was broken, causing water to spray everywhere—including all over my clothes. This was especially frustrating as we were traveling with a small baby.

The breakfast was very poor, with everything coming from packages or thawed from frozen—nothing fresh or homemade. When I asked the staff if the eggs were organic, I was told, “No, organic is too expensive,” which felt quite unprofessional and out of place for a hotel of this rating.

Incredibly, when I asked for a solution regarding the broken shower, I was offered access to a public shower in the sauna area—completely inappropriate and unacceptable for a family with a baby.

The one positive aspect was the receptionist. The young woman at the front desk was kind and genuinely tried to ease the situation. She was professional and empathetic, and her effort stood out amidst an otherwise disappointing experience.

This hotel is marketed as a 4-star property in Sweden, but unfortunately, it did not meet even basic expectations of cleanliness, service, or hospitality. I hope the management addresses these...