A couple of weeks ago I needed to book a quick one nighter at FRA for the end of January. When searching on the Hilton website I noticed some very good rates at the newly opened Hampton Inn Frankfurt Airport so I booked it for one night. Here's my initial impressions of the new hotel since there isn't any info on it on FT yet.
Location
Located in the Gateway Gardens area that now has a couple of hotels including a Holiday Inn, Park Inn, Moxy, Meininger, Element and a new Hyatt Place.
Transportation
Hotel shares the shuttle to/from the airport with the Holiday Inn, Park Inn and Meininger hotels. Shuttle is free to the hotel but they charge Euro 4 to return to the airport. (this is the same price the other hotels charge!) One thing to note, the shuttle does NOT pick up at the hotel...you have to walk to the HI next door for the pick-up. Drop-off is across the street from the hotel (not at the HI like the pick-up). Schedule for the shuttle is available at the reception desk. The bus was VERY full when I took it back to the airport at 7:50am.
Check-in
Slow...slower....slowest! The hotel just opened so it can be explained in the lack of training of the staff. In addition to the slow check-in, the staff doesn't seem to follow thru on elite benefits as I wasn't given any type of Diamond upgrade, no elite "thank you", no choice of drink or snack was offered...basically nothing! (I did go down later and ask and they told me where to get the free water and where I could pick a snack from.)
Facilities
Lobby was nice with seating and a bar on the other side of the reception desk. I was told the bar served some light snacks but that there was not restaurant. They did mention that the HI next door had a restaurant and I could eat there. The elevators need some serious attention! To get to the guest floors you have to scan your card but it took multiple attempts to actually get it to scan. One time I got out and got in another elevator because the one I had gotten into just didn't want to scan the room key. In addition to the scanning issue, the elevators seemed to have general issues as some people got stuck in one while I was waiting in the lobby.
Rooms
Very nice! Overall basic but very nice IMHO. See pictures:
Service
The staff needs training! They should be able to work the computer system and at least answer basic questions.
Another thing that annoyed me was that not all the staff actually spoke German. (I'm bilingual.) How can you staff a hotel in Germany with staff that doesn't speak German at the front desk. Sadly I have noticed this in other lower-end brands in places like Vienna as well at the Moxy. I assume finding staff is difficult but at least they should speak the language of the country they are working in plus some basic English.
Summary
Good option especially considering the price but they need to work thru their staff training issues and get the elevators sorted. If the pricing remains good I would stay there again. For my one night stay I got a rate of Euro 92 when the HGI was at 149 and the Hilton was at 199. I assume the rate was this low due to people not knowing about the hotel yet but it cannot go up much since it's competing against the HI, Park Inn, Moxy, Element and the Hyatt Place.