Kongresshotel Europe offers excellent service in English, making it an ideal choice for international travelers. Concierge service from the front desk is excellent.

The rooms are clean and contemporary and very comfortable. The shower stalls are not fully enclosed, so it's easy to slop water on the bathroom floor, but that's no more than a minor annoyance and a classic example of form taking precedence over function.

The "Spanish" restaurant downstairs offers a tremendous complimentary breakfast and excellent meals at dinner. An English-language menu is available. In the Summer, there are regular grill nights outdoors in front of the hotel. Ali's Bar, on premises, is air conditioned and comfortable.

The hotel is conveniently located about thirty minutes' walk from Feuerbach businesses like Bosch and Coperion, and also close to the city zoo. Numerous parks and the nearby Killesberg offer pleasant walks or runs. The Wichtel brewery restaurant on Stuttgarterstrasse is an easy walk, as is Gaststaette Distelfarm, a comfortable Swabian restaurant with a panoramic view of the city.

Kongresshotel Europe is less than 100 metres from the Maybachstrasse subway station, five stops away from the Hauptbahnhof on the U-6. This makes the airport roughly 45- 50 minutes from the airport by train. Cabfare from the airport is about 40 euros; the train is less than 6 euros. Take the S2 or S3 from the airport to the hauptbahnhof, then U6 toward Gerlingen to Maybachstrasse.

Broadband internet service is available, but at 13 euros per day - in distinct contrast to the Etap Accor hotel next door, where wifi is free.

All in all, Kongresshotel Europe is an excellent, 4.5-star hotel.

I certainly enjoyed my stay at Kongresshotel, but I kept finding things that made me think "damn, if they just changed this detail everything would be a lot better!"

Good cop: The area where they serve breakfast is very very beautiful (Restaurant Granada, on the lobby floor) and the breakfast is very good as well. The new rooms ("Relaxing") have a fantastic bathroom with a huge glass window toward the room. This gives a feeling that the room is bigger (and it's spacious enough in the first place). LCD tv was nice too. The hotel staff were happy to help, room service was excellent and the Granada restaurant had good food (moderately priced). Room light design was very good too, it made you feel comfortable at all hours. Good amenities. Shampoo bottles (rare in Germany, they usually just screw a shampoo bottle onto the bathroom wall), slippers, very nice bathrobe, goodnight Haribo, afternoon snack.

Bad cop: they need a better elevator! First of all: it's slow! It was slow enough to bother me in a 6 floor ride. Plus, the doors and buttons look ready to fall apart. Not a real problem, but I can't believe they don't spend a little money to make it look as good as the rooms. Also: as always in germany... internet! 13euro per day?!? Come on, that's paranoid. Everywhere in the world you can find hotels with free wifi, or at least with cheap wifi. However, that was a problem in every hotel I've visited in Germany, so I won't take it into account. Glasses for the minibar were clean but looked as if they were placed there two weeks ago.

Anyway, the only serious problem I had was sleep. I'm not an easy sleeper, so these may not bother you at all, but anyway here's what bothered me:

a) One pillow type - and not a good one. I actually *never* ask for specific pillow types at all, but when you only have one type it should at least be a medium thing: not too hard, not too soft. They had only extra-ultra-uber-mega-soft pillows.

b) Heating. This was the main thing actually. There's no temperature control system, so you just try to get the room warmer or cooler by turning the heating from hotter to cooler. That doesn't work well. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night because the heating had decided to suddenly interpret my setting (which 2 hours ago gave me moderately warm air) as "make the air boil" and then when I would lower it to a normal temperature I'd wake up an hour later finding out that the supplied air was icy. A setting of "12 o'clock" on the rotary switch doesn't mean that air is supplied at a specific temperature. It means "not as hot as 15 o'clock and not as cool as 9 o'clock". But these values are not specific either, so what at first was "warm" can become "extra hot" or "frozen" later. Seriously if there's one thing they really need to change, that would be this.

c) I booked a double room for single use to have a more comfortable bed. Instead I found two beds stacked next to each other. Yep, it's not the first time it happens, but it's never good.

d) there are no window blinds and the thick curtains don't completely shut the light off, so I found it hard to get an afternoon nap.

Overal, I enjoyed the room very much, it was comfortable and really nice to hang out in, but they just desperately need to install a better heating system.

I selected this place as a "safe bet" for me and a friend. When my friend left I changed hotels to Hotel Hansa where for 1/3rd price I got the same facilities and cleanliness. It is fine, and the people who work there are nice, especially in the restaurant where the food is good, but for the price I would have expected somewhere more newly refurbished and less like and "old style" UK hotel. The place next door looked similar for 1/2 price- it was called ETAP Hotel Stuttgart City Centre. TOP Kongress is however slap bang next to the underground which is handy