Hotel Auditorium Madrid

I’ve just completed a 6-night stay at the Auditorium Hotel, where I was presenting at a conference.

The hotel is directly across the street from the airport, but due to the size of the airport’s grounds, it was actually a 15 Euro taxi ride from the airport PLUS a 7 Euro surcharge because you were at the airport. The hotel offers a free shuttle, but I had no idea where to wait for it or how to summon it. You might want to call the hotel in advance of your trip to ask about the shuttle. I did take the shuttle back to the airport, which was VERY nice.

Check in was a BREEZE – easily the fastest check in experience I can remember in years!

The hotel is absolutely massive — reportedly the largest hotel in Europe! Guestrooms are built around a series of four “blocks” or towers, each with a central atrium – and the public spaces are extremely wide and voluminous. One would easily wonder why so much space is allotted to hallways and open spaces UNTIL you encounter a group like the thousands of multi-level marketers attending a rally on my arrival day. The place was just jammed with people. Once they left, the main floor of the hotel was a ghost town!

Internet is free and quite fast. There is a rather well equipped gym and an indoor/outdoor pool.

My room was very large with a big window that opened (even though the sign on the window says they can’t be.) The floors in the main room are laminate and marble in the bathroom. There’s a fridge in the room that had two complimentary bottles of water that were replenished every day. My only complaint is that the bed was rock hard — which just isn’t my personal preference.

Actually I do have another complaint. There are no irons or ironing boards in the rooms – and you CANNOT request one from housekeeping either. The ONLY option you have is to use the hotel’s laundry service, which charges 6 Euro to iron a shirt!! If you’re going to market yourself as the largest conference hotel in all of Europe, you really do need to provide business travelers with the amenities they need – and that includes an iron and ironing board, preferably IN your room!

The breakfast buffet was included in the price of the room and had everything you could want for breakfast, served in a MASSIVE dining room. There is ZERO individual service provided by the wait staff, so don’t expect to get anything other than what is offered.

I also had the dinner buffet FIVE evenings. At a flat rate of 25 euro including tax and tip, you get a very wide assortment of salads, vegetables, desserts and hot dishes AND a bottle of their house wine, which was just delicious! There’s nothing remarkable about the food, but it was decent and tasty — and there’s really not much variation from one evening to the next.

I didn’t try the main restaurant, since the buffet was a much better deal — but I did grab a sandwich for lunch in the piano bar area, and it was quite good.

CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED – There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the area of the hotel you can walk to, so unless you want to take a taxi into Madrid (about 25 Euro each way, 20 minutes travel time) or public transportation (a bus in front of the hotel to the subway station) that takes about an hour total for a fraction of the price — you are STUCK at the hotel. This is most certainly NOT a good choice of hotel for people that are here to see the sights of Madrid, but for a conference, it was just fine.