Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Centre

The hotel is located close to the central train station (approx. 20 minutes’ walk, or take the tram), next to the music hall (Muziekgebouw). The check-in was efficient and friendly. The rooms are spacious rooms, with the interior looking pretty new; they are furbished with a lounge chair and a small desk, but only a few hangers in the wardrobes (I counted 5 in total in a double room…). All rooms have a nice view over the harbour / IJ; in principle, a window can be opened, but it is a bit noisy due to the nearby motorway and train tracks. The bathroom has a decent size, but only a single washstand; it is equipped with underfloor heating – what a treat! A downside: the low water pressure – combined with the missing door of the shower, that cancels out the positive effect of the underfloor heating… The WiFi worked well; the electrical power sockets are equipped with USB sockets – a nice touch. The bed was a bit hard for my taste; only one pillow type is provided. The darkening works reasonably well. For breakfast, a pretty complete and tasty buffet is offered, with some live cooking; the restaurant on 2nd floor was pretty good, too (substantially better than the food at the lounge bar on the ground floor).

This is a very nice hotel, several 100 feet from our Holland America Cruise line ship. We were early for our check-in, and the young lady at check-in told us to come back at 13:00. We got back at 13:30 she was busy any a young man saw we were early so he wasn't going to check us in. We sat in the bar (nice bar) until one of the managers came by and asked if we're checked in yet. Telling her the story, she said to go back to the front desk, and there would be a problem checking in early. No problem checking in. Thank you. Great room, restaurant was good, wonderful dinner. This is one of those real gems. Pricey but worth it, staying here after the cruise.

Our experience here did not live up to what he had hoped. The initial problem started when we checked in, I was told that I had seemingly already checked in despite at that point being seated on a Eurostar. It took quite a while for this to be resolved and no clear reason/explanation was given as to what had occurred - as I had to checked in with Passports and booking reference if someone had checked in as me this is a serious security issue. We then got allocated a King Size room, when I pointed out we had requested a twin, the person dealing with me looked very put upon and then changed it. After a very long check in we then finally managed to get into our room. The room itself was nice but could have done with a bit of updating here and there, the view of the City was amazing. The air conditioning in the room was also not great, if it had been warmer it would have been insufficient. Didn't make a complaint as I knew by this point nothing would be done. The mini bar in the room does need to be kept refreshed daily, rather than a condensing note saying why it won't be. The executive rooms and suites cost a lot of money so this should be taken into account. We went down for dinner which we were very much looking forward to having looked at your website. However we found the menu was limited in its offering and for the cost was not that great. We again encountered the room issue when the server tried to put the bill against the room - it wouldn't let them as this time because there was no deposit or something? We paid by card but it was another example of ongoing issues with the room that just put a dampener on our experience. Next morning and we went down for breakfast - first thing we noted was that times noted for when the restaurant would be busy did not match - we found by experiment that the red zone noted was actually one of the quieter times. That particularly day we were out in Amsterdam, we came back and our room had not been serviced so went down to reception to check why it hadn't been done. Reception told me at around 16:00 that it had a note of "inspected" against it but that they would send someone up straight away to do it. We went for a couple of drinks and on our return found the room still had not been serviced. At around 21:00 I had an odd phone call from reception which was basically "has your room been serviced, yes or no?" - quite an abrupt way to ask - when I said no I was told someone could be sent up then, however since it was late and no one had turned up thus far I declined. This was just yet another example of problems with the room. We had seen pictures and reviews from people of terrace seating - but saw nothing when we were there so not sure whether it is a thing now? We found a vast majority of the staff not to be that pleasant and when my Mum was asking for a bottle opener the person responding first looked at her like she had grown two heads and then condescendingly told her were it was in the room. We never did find the bottle opener and bought one rather than asking again lest we cause any inconvenience. When I asked about the chocolate hour, again it was with a smug attitude was it told it finished at 15:30 - so its a chocolate 30 minutes rather than an hour? I get that what you mean is that chocolate hour is at 3pm, but your advertising is misleading as it suggests it lasts an hour - there is nowhere on your publicity at reception to indicate a finish time. Overall we found our experience not what we expected for a hotel with what it boasts on its website, and we found our experience to not be quite up to the standards you claim to provide. Our room and package was not worth the money we paid both in the sense of the multiple issues with the room, the issues with the room, and quite frankly attitude/borderline rudeness of the staff.