Sorell Hotel Rex

The location is near the station but you have to climb a little bit with all the luggage, it’s tiring.

We stayed at this hotel for one night. There is limited desk staff, but they tell you on the reservation the hours they are there otherwise give you a code. The receptionist was there when we arrived and she helped us to get our room earlier than expected. Room was clean and spacious. Hotel is slightly outside of the old city, but is within walking distance to all main sites. I loved their breakfast. So many vegan options and a really great muesli bar with dried fruits. Parking was convenient and onsite. Would recommend!

This hotel had zero service and zero humans, not even a person to check in customers at the front desk. When we arrived, we found that we were supposed to have been given a code to get in. Fortunately, someone else opened the door for us, but there was a long line of people in the lobby trying to check themselves in on one slow computer. The check-in process was so slow and bad that one customer came back, and cut in front of me to get a new key as the one he had been given was for a room that already had another customer in it. We had already checked in on line, but had to enter all of our information again nevertheless. I had thought that the slightly lower price was due to this hotel being a mile uphill from everything, not because it was so bad. For example, there was no space in the bathroom for toiletries. A loud tram went by every few minutes. The next morning, I discovered a speaker near the front entrance to call someone to open the door remotely. If you’re an American of ample size, you won’t fit into the small lift, and there was nobody to help with luggage. Breakfast was available for an additional charge, but it did not look appealing. When it was time to check out, I received an e-mail on how to check myself out, completely in German! The one plus is that a washcloth was supplied.

We stayed in the family room. It could have been cleaner and better maintained. On the plus side the breakfast was very good and the front desk staff was friendly. When we checked in the room didn’t feel very clean, there were food crumbs from the last guest on the bench above the fridge, some stray hairs in the bathroom and most surprising was a half eaten rotting capsicum in the fridge. The bathroom sink was also clogged and took ages to drain. I reported this to reception, but it wasn’t fixed during our stay. There was a sign on the bathroom mirror which told us to put our towels on the bathroom floor if we wanted them to be washed, to save the hotel/environment from unnecessarily washing lots of towels every day. We had therefore assumed that the rooms were serviced daily. When we got home that night, the room hadn’t been serviced at all, and now our towels weren’t dry, because they’d been in a pile on the floor instead of being hung up to dry! Our beds were comfortable but the pillows were as flat as a pancake, the kids said the sofa pull out bed they were on wasn’t very comfy. There was no aircon, but there was a fan on a stand, which sufficed for our visit as it wasn’t too hot at that time of year, and there was a large window we could open too. The breakfast was excellent, with lots of choice and a nice breakfast room. The hotel was about a 15-20 min walk from the main train station, so it was quite convenient except with luggage, because the walk involved a number of staircases and hills up from the station.

The hotel was quite strange. Upon arrival there was no staff and we had to do self check in. We were a group of 5 people with 3 rooms. We were let into the hotel via the intercom. The computer at the desk required a booking reference or QR code. Our hotel had been booked through a travel agent and we hadn’t been provided with either. So instead we had to manually input each persons details into the computer. This took absolutely ages! After travelling for quite a long time this was the last thing we wanted to spend time doing! The rooms were fairly compact, especially the bathroom. The hotel seems to have spent a lot of money on branded items in the rooms including a yoga matt and other random things - it would be better to have more staff in my opinion! The beds were very comfy though and an actual double bed instead of two singles pushed together. There was also a coffee machine in the room. Breakfast was very basic and seemed understaffed as a lot of things had run out. Again for check out there was no staff at the desk do we had to self check out via the emailed invoice - this didn’t work as we had to pay the city tax so I used the phone at the desk to do this. The location of the hotel is a bit out of the centre but is easily accessed (if you have luggage) using the number 7 tram at the main railway station otherwise it is walkable. Have given this 3 stars due to the lack of staff and it being so impersonal!