Review of MEININGER Hotel Hamburg City Center 3*

This was the fourth time we stayed at this hotel in Hamburg, the main reason is that we are visiting my mum who lives nearby, but her flat is not big enough for all of us to stay. First of all I have to say I would not be coming back to the hotel if I would not like it, it’s young and trendy and at first glance seems a good place to stay as a family. Unfortunately some of the rooms are rather small for a family of four and luggage, especially the newly renovated room we stayed in this time was a bit pushed for space (other rooms we stayed in in the past are quite big, so it seems to be a bit hit and miss) this room had a very small luggage area which was probably ok for a short stay, but not a family of four for five nights. I know the room we stayed in was one of the newly renovated rooms and a positive improvement to the old rooms was that we now had a proper shower and not one with a fixed shower head and push button that made it virtually impossible to give young children a shower. Questionable is the position of the main light switch on the double bed — at pillow height in the middle of the bed — we must have switched the main light on five times or more in the middle of the night with our pillows… But my main concern is the design of the new bunk beds — the focus seems to be on how everything looks and not on how safe it is to use. Yes it looks good, but my 5 year old daughter refused to climb up the ladder from the start (a stainless steel design in a sideways u-shape, round slippy steps, no extra handle bars for safety). Luckily my little boy was happy enough to climb up — in the past we stayed in a room there were we ended up moving one of the mattresses on the floor as my kids didn’t want to climb into the bed, this time we could not have done this because of the lack of space… — in my opinion bunk beds should be designed with kids safety in mind and not just with how cool the bed looks… To top it all off my husband slipped of said bunk bed ladder after saying good night to our little boy and fell and broke his arm — this rather spoilt our holiday — I do know that you cannot avoid all accidents, but a design with safety in mind would help to prevent accidents like this. Also what I do find disappointing is that I have emailed the hotel about my concerns over a week ago and no one has even managed to acknowledge my email, which I think is very bad customer service and based on this lack of response I will seriously consider booking a different hotel next time we visit my family back in my home town, after all this is not the only nice, conveniently located hotel in Hamburg.