Overall - well worth every penny. Paying for the VIP extra's was so-so worthwhile (including a room upgrade / robes etc). We were so very very happy with this hotel. The most helpful (excellent & English speaking) & knowledgeable reception staff. Its friendly morning & evening restaurant staff. The excellent cleaners who were very quiet until about 0930hrs each day. Everyone within the hotel was just great. Overall - brilliant. Good / excellent clean & spacious rooms at the rear of the hotel were brilliant... There was also a fitness suite & swimming pool .. Would we stay here again = Definitely & likely try another upgrade ... Recommended to all .. & it is also very nearby to Theodor Heuss Platz U-Bahn so it is most easily within close travel of all the city sites. City Travel (inc tours) can be easily arranged via reception ... "Sehr Danke" ...

I recently stayed at the hotel on business and I found to be hotel to be very conveniently located to the conference centre and metro. Service was outstanding as was the very comfortable accomdation.

Highly recommended.

This hotel doesn't look much from outside, and indeed walking into the lobby area hardly fills one with confidence, but first appearances can be very deceptive. I was extremely pleased with this hotel.

I chose the hotel because I was going to a conference at the nearby ICC, and it was indeed only a short walk away. It's not the closest hotel to the conference centre (that's probably the Ibis), but it's close enough, and I'm sure it's far more comfortable than the Ibis would have been. If you're there to see the sights of Berlin, however, there are probably many better located hotels.

The staff get top marks for their attitude. Friendly, professional, and helpful. They spoke excellent English, but only if required. I speak reasonably good German (although it's not perfect, and people can generally tell I'm English by the time I've uttered about 3 words), which is more than adequate to cope with the sort of discussions you have with hotel staff, and I find it quite patronising if people speak back to me in English. They didn't. But they did speak to my colleagues, who don't speak German, in flawless English. That's the way it should be.

A nice feature of the hotel is the swimming pool. OK, it's not exactly Olympic sized, but for a hotel this size in a city centre location it was very respectable.

Bedrooms were clean and comfortable, with very nicely kitted out bathrooms. My only quibble is that there was no safe in the bedroom, but this is a minor point. No doubt the hotel would have found somewhere secure to stash valuables if I'd had anything of any great importance.

Breakfast was fine. A rather limited selection of hot food, but an excellent cold buffet. The sausages in the hot food were very good.

The main negative thing to be aware of is that the communual facilities in the hotel are less than you'd usually expect in a 4* hotel. This wasn't a problem for us, because we spend so much time doing things related to the conference we were attending, but if you were expecting to sit in a nice hotel lounge, you'd be disappointed. As far as I could tell, if you wanted to sit with friends or colleagues over a beer, you'd need to do so at a table in the restaurant.

But overall, I was very happy with this place, and would definitely stay there again if I were going to another conference at the ICC.

The Villa Kastania was a very nice surprise. The area in where it is located looked quite posh. Everyone was very polite including a policeman who had informed me to my car in the same direction as the rest of the cars on my side of the street. The rooms were very comfortable with a large balcony and pleasant views. And the best of all was the price of 90 Euros for a triple room, breakfast not included.
Walking distance to cafes, shops and U-Bahn station.