My third stay at a Lindner property (after Prague and Antwerp) was also pretty lacklustre, although it was probably the best of the three.
I arrived in the late evening and only the night manager was working. He explained full breakfast was available in the restaurant, where the gym was, the bar etc. Rather than applying a suite upgrade award, this time I booked the wellness suite outright. It’s one-of-a-kind at the hotel and features a jacuzzi and sauna.
Entering the room, I was greeted by two armchairs from a 1980s Buckingham Palace yard sale. There were two 1L bottles of water, a typed welcome note and a small whole fruit plate. The separate sitting area was compact but functional with a separate sofa bed, small work desk, TV and minibar. There was also a guest WC. The bedroom and bathroom were one room and large. The jacuzzi was off-centre and looked fairly modern with some fancy push buttons for different powered jets. There was a double vanity, a WC, closet, shower and the sauna. The shower goes with the wellness theme and has no less than six wall jets, plus an arm head and a rain head. The sauna was large and although seemingly quite old, worked very well. It heated quickly and you could select the temperature down to the degree. Some instructions in the room would be useful, though. The jacuzzi filled quickly and was very relaxing (when there was hot water).
There were no less than seven bath towels, five floor mats and four hand towels in the bathroom (and despite leaving a note on the door saying not to change any linen, they of course were). Neither plug in the vanity worked. The bulk hand lotion was empty on arrival and never replenished. Housekeeping decided to skip my room on the first day.
For the second time at a Lindner property in three weeks, there was no hot water on my first night, nor on the first morning. I tried to phone the front desk but quickly learnt the hotel has no phones in the rooms! Not since my backpacking days (all four of them) have I stayed in accommodation without a phone. Each floor has a phone near the elevator. The night manager brought up a card with a QR code that launched WhatsApp, allowing you to message the staff. Over my multi-night stay, I messaged five times and never got a response. In fact, a week after checking out, the messages still haven’t even been read. Later in the stay, after having to repeatedly raise the lack of hot water and absence of housekeeping, I was given a EUR100 hotel credit.
Breakfast in the restaurant was okay. There’s chocolate in the granola which I just don’t get. Scrambled eggs were so hard and old every morning that they’d become a frittata. On my last morning, they at least resembled scrambled eggs. I found the Bircher muesli very nice and there were large croissants, not those piddly, one-bite types you see at a lot of hotels. The downside to squeezing your own OJ is that it’s then only room temp, not cold, which I don’t like. There were no cooked-to-order options. Unlike the Lindner Prague where plastic plants are everywhere, each table in the restaurant has a small, real potted plant.
As seems to be the norm at this property, no staff wear name tags. In fact, I don’t even think there’s a uniform at this hotel. The bartender, for example, wore a Gant jumper and was quite content to sit in front of the bar and play with his phone while I drank away at a nearby table. The “Gift shop” in the lobby sells exactly zero items and apparently, according to the clock on the wall, New York is actually three hours and 50 minutes behind Vienna, not four. I’m not sure what time zone that makes it. How management can walk past that, day after day, I just don’t get.
This hotel could probably be a category two, but that’s it.
I flew into VIE and took a Grab to the hotel for EUR34 late in the evening. Flying out of VIE, I walked a few minutes up the street from the hotel to a subway station and took a train directly to the airport for EUR4.40. I don’t recommend it during peak hour and it might be a bit tricky with bulky luggage.