Review of Meliá Berlin 4*

This is a very nice hotel in an excellent location. The rooms were of reasonable size and always clean. The employees are very friendly and always willing to assist. The hotel has an excellent restaurant and on the ground floor there is the famous tapas bar where you can enjoy a drink accompanied by some live music. The train, subway, metro and bus stations are located 1 minute walk away which is very convenient. The German public transit is exceptional and always on time. The wife and I bought a weekly public transit ticket and used it for the entire duration of our stay in Berlin. There is absolutely no need to get a taxi though the hotel can always book one for you if you require one. There are plenty of authentic German cuisine restaurants close to the hotel (right on the banks of the river). I only have one complaint which for me is quite serious though for someone else might sound trivial. The hotel Wi-Fi situation… First of all it is not free. It's around 5 Euros a day (8 to 9 US dollars). However this is not my main problem. I understand that you can't always get free things in every hotel. My concern is with the Wi-Fi service as a whole. The hotel Wi-Fi is offered from T-Mobile and it surely isn't designed for the needs of the modern traveller. It would have been fine if we only had a laptop computer that would never leave the room. What Melia fails to understand is that these days people travel with smartphones and tablets that they take OUTSIDE the hotel. Allow me to elaborate. The moment you leave your room you loose the signal. Once you are down the hotel lobby you have to log on to the Wi-Fi again using a webpage. The username you are given is Huge and so is the password. I only managed to connect ONE device per created account though I could have been doing something wrong. Yet, since you only get the 20 character (alpha numeric) username & password on a text file during your first loggon it makes it such a hustle to even try to connect a second device. But even for using one device (smartphone) it is such a hustle to log on to the internet every time you return to the hotel. Ridiculous. I have been a guest to various other hotels where you buy Wi-Fi but I have to say that the Melia service is by far the worst and most "traveller unfriendly". For this reason I am afraid to say that I would not be staying at this hotel again. Let me be clear … This is a great hotel and for someone who doesn't consider that an easy to use Wi-Fi service is a necessity it would be a perfect place to stay.