2
Kyla Yu -
3 years ago
We stayed at BATU Apart Hotel during Oktoberfest and encountered an unfortunate situation during our stay.
The room was advertised as being able to accommodate four people with the double sofa bed. I'm not sure if this is common in Europe, but it turns out the hotel charges extra for the third and fourth person per night. This was not a detail noted on Expedia (which is the service we booked through).
Personally, whenever I have stayed at hotels, it didn't matter if you had 1 or 4 people in a room with two double beds, as long as you didn't exceed the listed limit.
When I stay at Airbnbs, it's common practice to charge additional for more persons; however, this was my first encounter with a hotel being this strict on the number of occupants in a room.
When checking-in, it was revealed through conversation that we had more than two people and the hotel tried to charge us an additional 100 euros per person per night. Note that this is double the amount they usually charge (they increased the amount from 50 to 100 euros per person/night to make more money during Oktoberfest).
The room was already quite expensive due to Oktoberfest so adding an additional 200 euros a night would have blown our budget to pieces.
Luckily, we have friends that live in Munich and also had another friend with a hotel room a couple minutes walk away; therefore, we managed to shift people to other accommodations last minute and have only two people sleeping in the room each night. It ended up being quite hectic and a musical chair situation where we had people moving around often depending on the availability at our friend's hotel and homes.
Our issue with the hotel was from how they handled this situation. After revealing we had more people, the immediately told us that they "monitor security cameras constantly and will be looking to catch us if we have more than two people". They repeatedly tried to charge us even though we reassured them that we had other options and would be moving our additional occupants elsewhere.
On one day, we had a friend arrive in the morning and then the three of us left together later. On our way out, we were accosted by a staff member who stated he saw three people exit our room and that the maximum for that room was two. We informed him that our friend arrived in the morning and the security camera footage would corroborate our story. We found him rude in his responses and he promised us he would "definitely review the footage to see if we were lying".
Overall, we were turned off by this experience since we felt like we were constantly under watch even though we followed their rules...it was not a welcoming feeling.
I would understand their reaction if we were trying to stuff five or more people into a room meant for four people (this is common during Oktoberfest to save on costs); however, I didn't think this reaction was appropriate for a room that was advertised as having "lots of space and can comfortably fit four people!".
Anyways, aside from this incident, the hotel itself was good.
The location of the hotel is hard to beat. It's just a few steps away from the main train station, HBF, giving easy access to all parts of Munich and day trips to nearby cities and attractions (e.g. Salzburg, Neuschwanstein Castle). It was also walking distance to the Oktoberfest grounds which is one of the reasons why we chose it.
Our room was spacious and clean with house keeping service occurring every second day. The beds were not particularly comfortable but did not heavily impact our sleeps or give us body aches. There was some clear wear and tear on the beds and in the bathrooms since it's an older hotel.
The shower had a flooding issue because the drain didn't drain fast enough and if you opened the door before waiting for it to drain, all the water would flow onto the bathroom floor.
