We stayed here at the beginning of the month to go to the Christmas Markets in Cologne. It's hard to know where to begin to list this hotel's short comings but here goes:

1. Right next to a railway line which has freight trains going by all day and night (this was especially not good as my parents couldn't sleep most nights because of it)
2. The internet wasn't free and you had pay for it.
3. There was no tea or coffee making facilities in the room. If you wanted either of these you had to go down to the lobby and do it yourself. One night my father even had to ask the receptionist to boil the kettle.
4. The barman was rude and could not have been more unfriendly if he tried.
5. The nearest U-Bahn station was a ten minute walk away.
6. For a double bed they provided two single duvets and for the single beds they provided duvets that were too small.
7. They wanted 4.50 euros for a bottle of mineral water.
8. The air conditioning in my parents room never worked all weekend so my parents had to get in bed to keep warm when watching the TV (which by the way is nothing but German channels and only three English speaking channels which are all news channels)
9. There are hardly any restaurants in the area.
10. On the Sunday evening my mother and I wanted an evening meal as my brother and father were going to a hockey game and were eating at the arena. We were told that the restaurant was closed on a Sunday but they fail to mention this on the website but luckily we found a lovely Chinese restaurant one street away.

The only good thing was the breakfast. You could go up as many times as you liked and they provided a good selection of cereals, breads for toasting, yogurts etc. but the continentals cannot do a fried breakfast to save their lives. In the end we wound up going to the local Lidl and buying our own crisps, chocolate, cakes and drinks instead of paying the hotel's extortionate prices. If we were to do this trip again we certainly would not use this hotel again but try and found something closer to the city centre.

i stayed in this hotel in confused feelin.
i was expecting better hotel when it is 4 star.
the first shock was for 10€ parking in the garage.
secondly internet was not free.

good things, they upgraded my room because i have best western card.
the only business center laptop is enough if no one works with it.
rooms are not bad but only shower.

in general you may find better hotels with this price...

This is one of the worst hotels I have ever stayed at. We attended Medica in Dusseldorf and decided to stay in Koeln, Germany as the city is much nicer to see. We decided on the Best Western based on previous reviews and thought it was a pretty good location. NOT!!
1. Not a friendly hotel,
2. Hotel is RIGHT NEXT, literately RIGHT NEXT to the railroad tracks, so if you open your window you hear trains go by all day/night, good luck trying to sleep. They don't tell you how close they are to the tracks, but we found out the hard way
3. Rooms and floors have a sewer smell, no one could figure out, I wanted to puke everytime we enterred our room, and if we opened the window we got all of the trains noise.
4. A/C in rooms did not work I had it down to 5 C, I don't thiink it ever made it to under 20C. They simply blow air at very low speed!
5. We had customers and our relatives call and leave me messages, would come in every night check to see if we had any messages, and always the response was "NO!", I decided to call myself and left a message at the front desk message and got the same answer that night (no messages for me).

The hotel reception staff not friendly at all. our room was located on the 4th floor, the whole floor had a sewer smell to it, but worse, our room especially the wall near ou bed stunck like a septic tank, we complaint to the hotel staff and they only offer to move us to another smelly room.

Only good thing of the hotel was the breakfast, as our room cost included it. We booked through Expedia (not a good idea) as they required prepayment of our complete stay, we left a night earlier as I could not stand the smell, we lost our money as the hotel was unwilling to refund the last night., They said that the room was prepaid. Lost $200 USD. Learned to never prepay in full for a hotel. Stayed there from Nov. 17-22, 2008 was to check out on the 23. Room 404.
Metro was three long blocks away!!!! and ABSOLUTELY no restaurants near by.

PLEASE, PLEASE save yourself the time and enegry and stay at another hotel if you are in the area.

What the hotel's website doesn't show or tell you is that it's right next to a train track which seems to be used by freight traffic 24 by 7. We couldn't hear this if we kept our windows closed, which we were able to do due to decent air conditioning.

The superior room we had was large and clean with a decent shower - although it is a little dated with a very odd door entry system.

Breakfast meandered between good and poor depending on what you'd chosen to put on your plate. The bread/pastries were not very good at all, and they seemed to run out of many items during the breakfast service.

The reception staff were very good.