BotB

Short Review of Hilton Prague Old Town with some pictures:

I won’t bore you with a full review, as the hotel has been reviewed many times and rightly praised for its service and facilities. A lovely place and a great hotel with superb staff. Highly recommended. ^

Some points and pictures to whet the appetite:

We stayed on cash rate for 2 nights and had booked the entry level room which is a bargain for UK prices (IIRC the rate converted to around £ 50 a night for a peak season time) and we were upgraded to an exec room plus which was nice and large and appreciated. A fellow HHonors gold had booked the same room and time and was upgraded to an exec room with access to the exec lounge. We were all told we could have breakfast in the lounge or in the restaurant. We decided for the restaurant and it was very good indeed.

The staff here are excellent and were all knowledgeable and helpful (genuinely), from the check in staff to the concierge to the exec lounge staff to the cleaning staff. ^

The bed was comfortable and the room as well. Didn’t get a chance to get any pics of the bathroom before Mrs. BotB got there, however, it had a decent size and shower in bath (rather than separate) but at least a glass divider instead of a curtain.

The place was quite large and busy but still felt relaxed and quiet.

We only visited the lounge once on the first day around 16:00 and there was plenty of finger food and snacks around with a few staff to make sure everything was clean and people were taken care of.

We just took a standard taxi from the airport and back again and found this fine and not too bad for price (600 Crowns to the hotel and 480 back).

As this was during the Christmas season there were tourists everywhere but Prague is still such a lovely place and worth visiting.

There is plenty of shopping within 100m of the hotel at the large Palladium with places to eat and drink there as well.

The old town square was within easy walking distance and the Christmas market was heaving each day but had some great sweets and other food to try.

I have to say that I wasn’t prepared to still find people smoking inside of some bars but this is still allowed in Czech republic (they are just now putting forward a law to change this!)…most places didn’t have people smoking inside but there were still a few.

The first night we ate at a nice well restored art deco cafe nearby called Imperial Cafe:

http://www.hotel-imperial.cz/cafe-imperial-en.htm

Excellent meal but very well known and visited by tourists so not cheap (by local standards).

Another day we had a lovely lunch at a French restaurant called la Gare just beside the hotel here:

http://www.lagare.cz

Again, excellent food and wine.

We did love the diamond welcome that was new each day in the room and you can see pictures below which show the pride and quality of the place in respect of guests.

We obviously did the main tourist sites and found a lovely straw nativity scene up at the castle which you can see below. Good views from up there as well.

So, i”ll leave the review here and hope these pictures help other deciding where to stay and hopefully whet their appetite to visit this great city that is still excellent value for tourists.

King Exec Plus Bed:


King Exec plus by BA_pics, on Flickr

First day diamond welcome:

Diamond Welcome first day by BA_pics, on Flickr

Second day, diamond treat:


Diamond Welcome PRG by BA_pics, on Flickr

Large room with two windows (737) plenty of space and large TV:


Desk by BA_pics, on Flickr

Floor Plan:


floor plan by BA_pics, on Flickr

Exec Lounge Snacks:


Exec lounge snacks by BA_pics, on Flickr

Exec Lounge Finger Food:


Exec lounge food by BA_pics, on Flickr

Straw Nativity Scene at Castle:


straw nativity scene by BA_pics, on Flickr

Lovely Hot Chocolate, drinks and cakes at a place called Cacao (just down the corner from the hotel about 100m away):

cheesecake cacao by BA_pics, on Flickr

Typical Czech supper (half a duck, red cabbage, dumplings and sauerkraut) with Urquelle Pilsner: (the place was just beside Cacao but I can’t remember the name).


half a duck meal by BA_pics, on Flickr

abaheti

Thank you for this detail. Aside from the creepy straw people, I think we're going to enjoy our upcoming stay... :-)

Rickers

Indeed, thanks BotB

We are travelling there on 02 Jan for a few nights, and we have no such irrational mistrust of straw people, so I hope they will still be standing !!

hugolover

A great pity the wonderful Julius Meinl department store closed down. The restaurant was fabulous and extremely cheap.

abaheti

Just back and can report that the pictures above reflect our reality as well (pix below). We were upgraded to a nice room and received small Diamond gifts every day (ranging from fruit to nuts/olives to sweets, plus extra waters).








On the shuttle from the airport I'm not sure I'd recommend it. We showed up and women behind counter wouldn't even look at us for 2 minutes while they finished a chat. Then we paid and got tickets. Went out to the van and driver shows up on time but says "how much did you pay?" Proceeds to pay us cash for our tickets and send us to the city express bus to downtown "for cheaper". We wait there for a bit in the cold, but also need to be on a work call, so wander towards the cabs and start to negotiate. Shuttle driver yells over to us to come back, resells us our tickets, and we board. As I predicted when he bought our tickets from us, it looked like he was waiting for more passengers to make it worth his while... a group of 5-6 had shown up, so now it was worth it for him. Classic. After that, ride was fine, and drop off location next to the Hilton was superb.

In town we walked everywhere, but did need to get to the train station and walking it wasn't going to work with our bag configuration and where the station is. HIGHLY recommend Uber ($1.75 USD) for the short ride. Next time, I'll consider Uber for the airport run too.

helosc

I am sorry to hear about your trouble with the Cedaz shuttle. I have never had a problem with them. I always buy tickets directly from the driver ( I didn't know you could buy at an office in the airport - then you could probably pay with credit card? ).
Once from the airport to town and twice from town to airport, I was the only passenger. I always assumed that they had to do the drive anyway in order to keep to their schedule.

abaheti

Cash only still. I'm sure you're right about the rules, but in our case he politely declined he business and repaid us from his own wallet. We were bummed because the price, location, etc was perfect -- and the driver was even super nice, even pointed us to the cheaper express bus option before taking us back. On the web site it says to purchase at the booth inside. I wonder if in that case the driver only gets a cut so decided to wait for more passengers to pay for his gas (vs paying him directly and he gets it all)? My guess was that he's a contractor vs employee.

We were actually laughing about it at the time, so no harm done other than 20 minute late departure and some time going back and forth in the cold.

Interesting also was that the booth gave us a card for a fixed taxi rate to downtown (which at that point we were willing to do given the need to be on a call), but the taxis all said the quoted rate was only an estimate so price could end up being double. We weren't sure if that sounded right, so having the shuttle call us back worked out fine.

longhorn11

Has anyone been here recently? I've read that part of the hotel, mainly the exec area is being refurbished. Trying to decide between the two Hiltons.

Rickers

Yup .... we were there for 1 week last month. The 8th floor is being completely renovated (including the Exec Lounge, which has a corner location on the 8th floor). As I recall the renovations will go on until March / April.

They have temporarily re-located the EL to a function room on the 1st Floor (the Chopin Room, I think ?), and although it is not a particularly attractive room ( large-ish rectangular meeting room), the staff here really make it a very pleasant place to spend some time.

The food and drink offerings were very good, and the location of the hotel is great .... easy stroll into the Old Town area, whilst the other Hilton would have added another 10 mins to each walk, and having been to both, I have to say I much preferred the location and the whole atmosphere & ambience of the Old Town.

Enjoy whichever you choose !

helosc

And you might want to take into consideration that the other Hilton (Hilton Prague) was put up for sale in November and that the new owner might rebrand to a non-Hilton chain.
Not sold yet but I am eagerly awaiting news as I have a stay in May.

pretzlaff

Here on 2 day cash stay. Not sure if I booked the lowest possible room but it was the lowest price room available on the app when I booked.

Got here and the front desk gal noticed that I was with my wife but that I had (accidentally) booked a room for only one. She moved us to a king bed room.

She didn't say anything about an upgrade, so I asked if I could purchase lounge access. She said that since I was Gold that I had a club room and lounge access already. Wow!

In the lounge now on the desktop computer, this lounge is very, very nice. Great food and free pour beverages of all sorts. A couple of staff taking great care of us and not at all crowded.

The wife is now spoiled, so we have to come back.

romsdeals3

I'm here right now for 4 nights, this hotel is awesome! I spent 125,000 Hilton HHonors for an AXON award for the 4 nights. They upgraded me to a suite as a Gold member and let me have breakfast downstairs in the restaurant. Also, the executive lounge has unlimited beer and wine... quite dangerous! Best value I've ever gotten from a Hilton I would say.

tkelvin69

I thought cat 6 Axon awards went to 160,000 points quite some time ago??

pretzlaff

To clarify.. Hard liquor is in the lounge from 6pm to 8pm. Beer and wine from 6pm to close.

romsdeals3

This hotel is category 5.