This is not the sort of hotel anybody is going to rave about, you have to realise that. I stayed there because, due to a trade show in Amsterdam, all the mid-price hotels seemed to be fully booked or to have doubled their prices. The alternatives were numerous places with awful reviews on Tripadvisor (dirty rooms, dodgy plumbing and bad service).

So given this I was pleased with my stay here at the Campanile, because the rooms were clean, the plumbing was fine (lots of hot water in a reasonably spacious bathroom) and the service was good.

Now, the rooms have a cheap feel and are not large, but there's a decent flat screen TV and there are coffee making facilities. The bed was comfortable. The room was warm (very important, as it was -8°C outside). The rooms are accessed from the outside, motel-style, which might annoy the easily annoyed...

Breakfast was good enough (although during my three breakfasts the scrambled egg and bacon trays always seemed to be nearly empty when I arrived....I assume this was just bad luck on my part).

As for the location, yes it's a long way out of the centre, and beautiful it is not (but neither is it particularly rough or does it feel particularly dangerous). But it's very close (literally 100 metres) from the Gaasperplas metro stop on the end of the red line, with trains to Centraal Station every 10 minutes (and easy to get to RAI station, where I was working, with one change).

I probably wouldn't stay here again unless I had to (because alternatives nearer the centre were fully booked) but in such a scenario I would certainly prefer to stay here than in some noisy, dirty dump in a more touristy area for a similar price.