Alfa Bet (Hotel Alfa)

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Hotel Alfa
Date:	03/02/02 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good central location, Nice comfortable rooms, Reasonably priced

Disadvantages: Commission-hungry night porter, Uninspiring (but adequate) breakfast buffet, Unexpected early-morning construction work

The aim of my recent trip to Munich was to try to keep the cost of the holiday as low as possible. So, I shopped around online to try to find a reasonably cheap, but comfortable hotel in the city. I ultimately settled on the Hotel Alfa, booked through Hotel Connect (www.hotelconnect.co.uk), which worked out at £270 for five nights in a twin-bedded room.

LOCATION

The hotel was within a couple of minutes' walk from the Hauptbahnhof in central Munich on Hirtenstrasse, making it nice and easy to get to, even when weighed down with luggage. The easiest way to get to the hotel from the airport is to take either the S1 or S8 S-Bahn lines to the Hauptbahnhof, take one of the Arnulfstrasse exits from the station, and walk to the hotel. If you're either feeling flush or lazy, then you can take a taxi, which takes about 25 minutes, and costs around 50 to 60 Euros (£30-37).

In terms of proximity to the city's main attractions, the Hotel Alfa is about fifteen minutes walk from the Marienplatz, and maybe twenty minutes from the Residenz palace. The location is also very convenient for the S-Bahn and U-Bahn (from the Hauptbahnhof) and for buses and trams, which run along Arnulfstrasse.

There are several excellent beer halls around the hotel, most notably the Augustiner Keller, about five minutes walk to the west along Arnulfstrasse, and the lovely Augustiner Braustuben, about ten minutes walk to the west, on the other side of the station, on Bayerstrasse. The less-welcoming, but nonetheless pleasant, Lowenbraukeller is about five minutes walk to the north on the corner of Nymphenburgstrasse and Dachauerstrasse.

SERVICE

Checking-in wasn't a problem. Hotel Connect send you a slip that you just have to hand over when you reach the hotel. All of the reception desk staff at the hotel spoke excellent English, and the check-in form was printed in both English and German. The lobby of the hotel was warm and welcoming, w
hich is particularly pleasant on those cold Bavarian winter nights.

The staff at the reception desk were generally very friendly and helpful, particularly the morning receptionist - a native of Munich who seemed keen to ensure that visitors enjoyed their visit to his city. Unfortunately, I can't offer quite so much praise for the French evening/late night receptionist, who seemed more interested in increasing his commission than in ensuring that we enjoyed our visit to the city. One evening, as we were heading out to a beer hall, as we handed in our key at the desk, he asked us where we were planning to eat that evening. "At the Lowenbraukeller," we cheerfully replied.

"On a Saturday night?" he asked incredulously. "It'll be very crowded. And why would you want to eat German food anyway? I know an excellent restaurant just a few minutes from here. Opus One. I'll book you a table if you like."

Smooth. Real smooth. As we headed off to the Lowenbraukeller, we saw Opus One, which boasted "authentic Californian food and wine". We continued to the beer hall. It was busy, but certainly not very crowded, and we had some superb Weinerschnitzel.

ROOMS

Our twin-room was large (by European hotel standards) and comfortable, certainly it was a good deal larger than I had expected for the price. The design of the room seemed somewhat odd, however. You had to walk through the carpeted bathroom, in order to enter the room proper. The en suite toilet was in a separate little room just off the bathroom.

The room included a minibar, with the usual selection of overpriced soft drinks and miniatures, a telephone and a television. The television offered around thirty German and Austrian channels, and CNN, which was the only English-language channel. If pay TV floats your boat, there was the option to pay a few Euros to watch 'A.I.' or 'Valentine' in German, or two emba
rrassingly amateurish-looking hardcore porn movies. You could get a fair idea in the couple of minutes of free viewing you were allowed each day.

Germany's strongly ecological stance ensured that we were reminded of ways to save energy at every turn. The bathroom boasted the usual emotive sticker imploring us only to leave towels on the floor if we really wanted the world's natural resources to be wasted on cleaning them. Both the bathroom and the main room were equipped with eco-friendly slow-to-light bulbs. Even the corridor outside the room was lit by bulbs on strictly time-controlled circuits - hit the switch when you reach your floor, and then race to your room before you're left in darkness.

Rooms were cleaned by maids at around 11am each day, shortly after breakfast had finished. The maids did a pretty thorough job, remaking beds, vacuuming, and even neatly folding your pyjamas, if you'd carelessly left them in a dishevelled heap at the foot of your bed. Oh, and yes, they did fold the end of the toilet paper into a little V-shape.

BREAKFAST

The Hotel consisted of three buildings, all connected by a central courtyard. The breakfast room was in building C, on the ground floor. Breakfast was a standard continental buffet affair, and was open between 6.00 and 10.30am each day. When you sat down at a table, a waitress came over to ask if you wanted tea or coffee, after which you were left to your own devices to pick and choose from the comestibles on offer.

A couple of newspapers were available each day - a German one, I'm afraid I don't know which, and the International Herald Tribune. The newspapers were locked into those big wooden stick things to stop you walking off with them, but this also meant that you couldn't read the columns nearest the staples.

I can't say I was overly impressed by the breakfast options. There were four fairly stale breakfast cereals available, a bowl
of slightly elderly apples and oranges, and a basket of fresh bread rolls. At one end of the buffet, in a heated tray, was a little dish of unappealingly clotted-looking scrambled egg, and a few rows of hard-boiled eggs. At the other end of the buffet was a refrigerated cabinet with a selection of cheese slices, and cold meats. Compared to other continental hotels I've visited, it was a fairly uninspiring selection, but it was adequate to tide you over until your next meal.

I was surprised by how few other guests were present at breakfast, whatever time we headed down there. I'm not sure if this reflected a lack of guests in the hotel, or a lack of enthusiasm for the breakfast options by the other guests. Only on one occasion was the breakfast room busy enough to justify opening the more sumptuously decorated extra seating area, which most of the time remained closed.

CONSTRUCTION WORK

When I was staying at the hotel, the windows of the rooms on the top floor of the part of the hotel we were staying in were being replaced. Work, consisting in the main of drilling and a lot of hammer thumping, began at 8am on our last two mornings. It didn't matter too much on our last night, because we had to get up early to get back to the airport for the flight home. However, the previous night, I would have liked the opportunity to have had an extra couple of hours in bed.

I think my main complaint isn't so much with the fact that the work was being done, but with the fact that we weren't warned to expect it, and the hotel offered no apology. It wasn't a major irritation, because it did force me to get up and spend more time sightseeing, but the stay would have been better without it.

CONCLUSIONS

The Hotel Alfa offers a good location and good comfort for a reasonable price - only £27 per person per night for a twin room. My only problems with the hotel were the commission-hungry night porter, the unins
piring breakfast buffet, and the refurbishment work, and for these reasons, I have to reduce my rating for the hotel.

Summary: