I stayed recently at this hotel while in Budapest for business and few days city break with my partner. I will start with the pro's which are that it has a very good location, offers free wifi and the standard rooms are a good size with nice bathrooms. The hotel was also flexible and allowed me to have a late check out considering the multiple problems i had with my travel plans due to the bankruptcy of Malev airlines. This was well appreciated.

That being said, there are quite a lot of things to be improved with this hotel. The first comment i have is was not up to the standards of other Kempinski properties i have been to including in Istanbul and St. Moritz. It refers to itself as a five star luxury hotel, but it is more of a 4 star business hotel. There is nothing done to make guests feel special whatsoever, no nice touches, etc it seems like they do the bare minimum to keep their stars. Bathroom amenities are very scarce, the toiletries provided seem like those of a three star chain hotel, absolute minimum in whats provided. For example, they give you one piece of soap but there's a shower, a separate bathtub and a sink. In order to get more soap i had to specifically request it and i was given one extra microscopic bar of soap. The other thing is that there are no coffee or tea facilities in the room so if you want this you will need to order from room service. The problem is, the tea is served in the same thermos as coffee so it tastes like coffee!! i left a note on the tray after taking only one sip of my tea,explaining that it was not acceptable, and my note was not acknowledged.

ALso- beware when booking the "city tour" . It was not sold to me like this, instead i asked if it would be possible (due to the extremely cold weather) to have a taxi take us to a couple key destinations in the city so we could take pictures. The concierge suggested a one hour car rental where we could go around to the various points of interest, for 8900 hf. We agreed, and it was a very nice experience. I would not consider it a "guided tour" because the driver, although very friendly did not speak enough english to give a proper tour or answer questions, but still a good experience. When it was time to checkout, i saw that on the bill it was 12,000 hf. I explained to the person at front desk who gave me 2 or 3 excuses of why this may be that the price presented to me was 8900 but in the end he told me i must have misunderstood!!! This was very upsetting because this is not the type of treatment i expect from a five star hotel- non transparent things like this, especially that they didn't do anything to correct this even though i made it very clear that i was in complete disagreement and felt cheated. Considering this hotel places so much emphasis on their "clef d'or" customer service, i would think this type of thing would not happen.

In the end, i wouldn't recommend this property to people used to staying at five star luxury hotels, expecting a certain level of cst. service and treatment, but would recommend for business stays.