Hotel reviews: Best Western Hotel, Stockholm

Kicking off my irregular series of accommodation reviews, this debut piece is dedicated to the hotel I stayed at in Stockholm, a chain of hotels called the Best Western Hotel. Hopefully they prove to be of some help when you next stay abroad.

The good

• Spacious rooms – the rooms I stayed in are quite large by European standards. The hotel is divided into two buildings, one building in the same place as reception and another adjacent. We were in the adjacent building. The rooms are accessed via a pass card, which also activates the lifts.

• The buffet breakfast was tasty and offered excellent variety – As I arrived on a Friday, the buffet breakfast for Saturday and Sunday operated from 7:30 – 11am, which allowed plenty of time to get a good feed before going on my travels. The buffet breakfast had a very generous variety of meats, cheeses, vegetables, breads, juices, coffees, teas, eggs and more. I particularly liked the local touch of having two varieties of herring available for sampling. I worried about the cost of purchasing the included buffet, but it proved to be incredibly convenient and economical. It made things so much easier to not have to worry about breakfast each day, especially when we could eat as much as we wanted.


• Staff exceptionally friendly – A hotel is meant to have excellent customer service, but there is good and then there is excellent. I broke a glass during the buffet breakfast and the staff member quickly cleaned it up, no questions asked. Staff were cheerful and friendly, and always willing to help.


• Mineral water included – The room came with complementary mineral water, which I gladly took advantage of. Surprisingly tasty and refreshing!

The not so good

• Late check in time – Check in is only offered from 3pm onwards, however we arrived into Stockholm at 11am. This meant that we had to drop our bags into the luggage room and then explore the city for around 4 hours before coming back to the hotel. This wouldn’t normally be a bad thing, except for the unlocked luggage room we were forced to use (see below). Check out is at 12pm.

• Unlocked luggage rooms – The luggage room to store our bags is unlocked by a switch at reception. However, during the day time it was unlocked so anyone could really enter the room and rummage through people’s luggage. This was disconcerting to say the least, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it in the situation.

• The location – The hotel is slightly far from the city centre, around a 15 minute walk from the central railway station. For domestic flights this would be okay, but for an international flight, I did start to feel the pinch lugging around my 20kg worth of suitcase luggage and carry on backpack.

• The room safe malfunctioned slightly – I chose to use the in-room safe to keep my passport and laptop safe. Unfortunately, there was a malfunction with the coding system so the safe wouldn’t open on one occasion. This required me having to call reception and have them open the safe. Staff took around 5 minutes to come to my room, and a further 20-30 minutes to open the safe. Worryingly, the safe was opened by a key belonging to a different room’s safe, which does not seem too promising from a security point of view

Overall:

Best Western Hotel, Stockholm
Döbelnsgatan 17
Stockholm, Sweden

Location: 4/5
Facilities/Security: 3/5
Service: 4/5
Food: 4.5/5
Check in/check out: 3.5/5
Price: 4/5Overall: 3.83/5

In summary: If you’re looking for a relatively affordable hotel with great service and an included buffet breakfast, you can’t go wrong with Best Western. However, be warned that your luggage isn’t necessarily secure if you arrive a few hours prior to check in and that the room safe may in fact be 'too safe'.