Pricey but very convenient - ANOTHER airport hotel review! (Sheraton Dusseldorf Airport (Dusseldorf, Germany))

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Sheraton Dusseldorf Airport (Dusseldorf, Germany)
Date:	20/02/09 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: There's something a bit surreal about a nice hotel on top of a car park

Disadvantages: You pay more than the hotels that are shuttle-bus distance away

A member recently commented when leaving a note on one of my reviews, that I seem to be spending a ludicrous amount of time hanging out in airport hotels. And she was correct because January and the first half of February did see me doing just that. This however, is the last of the airport hotels for now - I hope so anyway.

We recently needed to arrange a business meeting with about 10 people and wanted to combine it with a trip to a trade-show in Cologne. I wanted to make everything as easy as possible for everyone so I persuaded my boss, who lives nearby, that we should base the meeting around Dusseldorf Airport. The advantage was that everyone we needed had access to direct flights to Dusseldorf and the boss could actually go home and see his wife and kids - something he doesn't manage nearly often enough. We threw all the arrangements together very quickly and decided to book rooms for everyone at the Sheraton Dusseldorf Airporthotel.

I had a sneaky suspicion when I saw the photos on the hotel website that I'd been there before many years ago when the hotel was called the Arabella. I had happy memories of a very early flight being made slightly less painful as a result of staying so close to the airport that you really do just roll out of bed and stroll into the departures area. The entrance to the hotel is directly in front of the main airport building and the hotel itself sits on top of the multi-storey short-stay car park. Sure enough I later discovered that the Arabella had 'morphed' into the Sheraton (a more internationally recognisable hotel brand) so I was very pleased. What I remembered from my previous stay was that the hotel had a turfed roof garden and when I'd opened my curtains to see how the weather was looking, I'd been charmed by a mother duck and a group of young ducklings taking a stroll outside my room. I also recalled that against all the odds given its proximity to the airport that the hotel was remarkably quiet.

With people arriving from different cities on different flights, we agreed that we'd all aim to meet in the hotel lobby at 11 am on the Monday morning. Arriving at the airport I walked straight out of the arrivals area and saw the sign for the Sheraton on the ground floor of the car park. There's a lift that takes you up to the top floor where it opens onto the hotel lobby. I wanted to send a couple of emails before we left for Cologne so I asked the receptionist for help. Unfortunately the guy on reception told me that he couldn't give me a code for the Wi-Fi service unless I was checked in and he couldn't check me in because the rooms weren't ready. It looked like a Catch-22 until he handed me a card with his own personal Wi-Fi access code and invited me to use it since it was the only way round the problem. 10 out of 10 to him for using his initiative.

With my emails sent and the rest of my colleagues assembled we all left our cases with the hotel and headed out to look for the railway station. What can I say? We messed up massively by assuming that the station just outside the hotel was the main railway station. As a result of this (the real station is actually a short mono-rail ride away) it took us about one and a half hours to get to Cologne instead of half an hour.

When we returned in the evening we checked into our rooms. The rooms are laid out as a double donut around the outside of the circular car park building with corridors radiating out from the lobby zone. I had a room on the outside of the donut and on the airport side. I could look out at the air traffic control tower which was eerily close by. If I'd had a torch with me I could probably have waved a few jets down by leaning out of my window.

My room wasn't very big but it was nicely decorated and had everything I needed for just one night. There was a double bed set up for one person with all the pillows in the middle but with a bedside table on each side. The colour scheme was in shades of ginger, green and cream and everything was in good condition. The curtains were perfectly light-tight which is important for an airport hotel where people are often sleeping at strange hours. The furniture included a wardrobe with a safe and an iron and board inside, a desk with a chair, a TV over the mini-bar, a small tray with kettle and tea and coffee and a small chest of drawers. There was also a suitcase stand. The bathroom was small but pleasant with sparkly black basalt counter and floor and with bright white tiling. Everything was effectively squeezed into quite a small space.

We met in the lobby to have drinks before going out for dinner. We grabbed a bunch of sofas close to the reception desk and whilst one colleague checked with reception how long they thought it would take to get to the restaurant, I went off to order drinks for everyone. An old colleague of mine used to say that he really liked airport hotels because almost everyone is there on their own and everyone's on their way to somewhere and more likely to chat to other people than in a regular hotel. Sure enough, whilst I waited to give my order, a couple of people at the bar started chatting and asking why I was there, what were we doing and so on. The barman said he'd bring the drinks over and I escaped back to my group.

The lobby at the Sheraton is really big and has the bar area, a computer zone in the middle and a quieter seating area where we had gathered. Everything was nicely decorated and the furnishings were of a good standard. The lobby has a pleasant and welcoming vibe.

Breakfast was included in our room rates so I popped by the next morning. I'm not normally very sociable at breakfast time but I was glad that I went because the breakfast buffet was exceptional and the views from the restaurant were excellent. Suitably fed, I grabbed my things from my room and checked out, leaving with feelings just as positive as I'd had on my first visit many years before. We held our meeting in the conference facilities at the airport which were so good that we definitely plan to use Dusseldorf airport and the Sheraton again.

Note: I don't have any idea where dooyoo got the photo that accompanies this review but it certainly isn't the Sheraton at Dusseldorf airport. The hotel occupies the top floor of a large round multi-storey car park, not the pretty red-brick building in the photo.

Summary: I like this one a lot and I'd definitely plan to go back