IC Cologne and Berlin are typically not what I call a luxury hotel.

The hotels are brand new (even if I get recently a room with some torn wallpaper) and have good amenities (large pool and fitness centre for Cologne),

but the service is really poor, welcome not exactly warm, and when arriving into your room, you have to spend 20 minutes to solve some issues (air conditionning which was not working at Cologne, TV which was out of order in the room at Berlin, junior suite which is so dark that I needed a lamp at Berlin, so tiny Club Lounge that you have to wait to have your breakfast in Cologne, room which was not cleaned at 4pm at Berlin, etc.)

What is strange in both these two hotels is that they are plenty of staff, but you really wonder what they are paid for. Nothing seems to be coordinated, and you really feel to face a big administration when you have a question/an issue not listed in their standard customer care answer. (I had to go to the post office in Prague, for example, because they were not able to take a parcel bigger than a standard letter)

And the hotel are so big that you just feel being one number more than a welcome customer.