Germany Cologne Sofitel Dorint am Dom

[Chris26WI]

Well, I was booking 5-star level in Priceline for Cologne last time because I wanted to prevent to get the Park Plaza again (4-star) which is really outside the city center and not worth its 4 stars.. - So I got the Sofitel Dorint (Mondial) for Cologne...

After having succeeded in arriving there (not easy for car drivers; easy for people arriving by train as the central station is just a walk away), and found a place in the garage (no free parking places available in this area!), I was checked-in friendly and fast, and got a voucher for a free drink (only in combination with a food order). There are only 2 tiny lifts (dated 1962) so you'll have to be patient sometimes (especially during busy check-in/-out-times) till you get to your room. The 205 rooms of the hotels are spread over only 3 levels only so even after arriving by lift in your level, you will usually have quite some way to walk to your room. After entering my room I was a bit shocked because it was really TINY... I never had such a small room in a 5-star-hotel. Looked more like the room in the IBIS-Hotels or Formule-1 or Intercity-Hotels, one room with an integrated bath "cell" - just pushed to 5-star-level by modern design... The furniture was really designed to use the little space effectively but however it was still a tiny room. There was no bath tub in the bath"room", just a shower (which was however quite large for a shower cubicle and easy to adjust - in terms of the temperature of the shower water). Nice french bath amenities, nice lights.

Everything in this hotel has been renovated lately, including the furniture of the rooms which look really nice and warm, the lights are very well done too (can be adjusted with little metal sticks from the bed side). There is internet access available at the little desk. There's a TV-set (quite small philips; I wonder why they didn't replace the old TVs by LCD-screens if they know they have space problems and are renovating?), a safe, and a minibar (expensive, as usual), but no coffee-/teafacilities. I ordered some food for room-service dinner (good price - 10,80 EUR including appetizer and small salad, see picture - and tasty) and wondered how this guy will succeed to put the (rolling) dinner table inside the room, but he succeeded! Just enough space left for me to sit before the table and watch TV - but for 2 persons it would have been a sort of space problem.

The real problem began during check-out when they wanted to charge me 130 Euros for the room, as they couldn't see that it was a priceline booking by some way... only after 3 refuses to pay that and one copy of my ID card later... he finally found some credit card number (transmitted by priceline) where he could charge the room to.... ; I also asked to talk to the "manager on duty" - but they told me, "he's not here at the moment".... ; 40 minutes later, I could finally leave the hotel... but no word of excuse or anything. (Apparently they weren't used to bookings by Priceline Hongkong which seems to have different booking and data transmission procedures than Priceline US/UK). What a story!

So, all over, I was not really content with that place - mostly because of the very small rooms. Even as priceline-customer and as standard-room-guest I do expect some SPACE in the guest room of a 5-star-hotel!