sdsearch

I know it's out of the way. I know it's useless without a car. I know it's not near anything.

I planning on staying there as part of a Budapest/Hungary two-week vacation later this spring, when I want to be based near Budapest but mostly doing driving side-trips (around the Danube Bend and so on), including early morning and late afternoon/evening (for "golden hour" photography) which is tricky with public transport.

I thus want a place with free parking.

The IC is out, not just because of the parking and car trips issue, but also because it is sold out anyhow on the days I'm going to be there. And during an earlier part of the trip I'm staying at Hilton Budapest (Castle) anyhow.

Anyone stayed at this hotel? Is it easy to get in/out with a car? Any PC Platinum benefits? For eating, should I stay in the area or go to Budapest, and if go to Budapest, what's a pratical place to park-and-ride?

Thanks.

(I tried to do searches but most everything here that turns up in a "Budapest" search is about the IC, or if about this hotel just saying it's out of the way, and FT won't let me search on a small word like "HI".)

LRD

Yes, you can search on a two-letter term if you include it in quotes, e.g., ["hi" budapest]. Unfortunately, this will also return posts that include such useless terms as "Hi All..."

This is also handy for searching for three-character words that are not airport codes.

Hannibal Lecter

I did some research when it was on PB, and decided to give it a miss

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/inter...l#post14419827

Luca T.

I used that hotel a couple of years ago...so I don't exactely remember about upgrades etc...i just remember that the room was really old as everything else in the hotel...with all the cheap options in Budapest i made a point not to come back...really a sad sad place.
I was just driving by the hotel last week (while staying at the IC) and noticed the new Hi logo...so maybe that means they had some refurbishment work in the last few years...but it's just a guess.
Hotel is located just next to the main highway coming from Austria/Balaton to Budapest...you access the hotel through a petrol station or something like that...
So, even if it might seem that it's a handy location to just drive around, please keep in mind that this highway is taking all the traffic from outside budapest to the center, which usually makes the way to the center really very busy during rush hour early in the morning...of course if you're driving towards Balaton you won't have such problems...
Talking about restaurants...all you can find around the hotel is a McDonalds and some other fast food in some of the many shopping center in that part of Budaors...at evening without traffic going into town is really only 20 minutes...it's a no brainer for me to go to the center...

WilcoRoger

I'd avoid it at all costs.

You already know the main reasons (location, etc) but for your specific wishes you couldn't chose much worse.

Danube Bend - it's north of Budapest, whereas HI is located SW of Budapest, so you'll have to drive through the city. Good luck with navigating the morning rush hour - the M1/M3 motorway is clogged in the morning, as they bring a mass of commuters. (you are well placed, if you want to go in the morning toward lakes Velence and Balaton, though)

abhilife2001

same here..
this hotel was on PB and they were also offering free breakfast for Plats even on a PB stay.. so it was real good value BUT since we decided on an alternate accomodation, this stay did not materialize..

I guess they should be giving free bfast on a paid stay for Plats if they are giving the same for award stays for Plats ..

sdsearch

Well, I'll probably want to go to Danube Bend one day, but Pecs (that's SW, isn't it?) another day, and maybe Sopron (WNW?) another day, and the Monument Park (the place with the communist-age statues in the suburbs) another day.

So (without there being a ring road, as far as I can tell), is there any other one location outside the center of the city (one of my guidebooks says it can take 30-60 minutes to get out of the center of the city!) that would work better? (I'm on a trip where one of the main goals is scenic photography, which means destinations for specific days are picked last-minute based on the weather, and so I need several days in one flexible place; I can't stay a different day in the north and a different day in the south and hope that the weather is right for whichever place on whichever day.)

The reason I'm consider this HI is because I have 5 Sweet Dilemma free nights with no prospect for better-valued use before they expire. (But I could find a different use for them if I found something signficantly better locationwise than this HI for outside-of-Budapest daytrips in "all" directions.)

I had ordered a road atlas for Hungary and hoped to have it by now, but it got lost in shipment so it's being reshipped. Which is why I'm not clear on bypassing Budapest yet. I can't get from SW of Budapest to N of it by going around Budapest (rather than through it) in any way?

By the way, what are the typical hours of the rush hour mess?

And is the traffic any saner on weekends? I could rearrange the parts of my trip to have the weekend in the middle of the trip be at the HI, if that makes a big difference. Right now I had planned the weekend to be while I was in the area northeast of Eger, but I don't have any accomodations booked yet so I can rearrange the order if that makes sense.

(FYI, my plan is to stay at the Hilton "Castle" for the first 4 nights after I arrive, then go back out to the airport, rent a car, and split the rest of the 2-week trip between the area northeast of Eger and daytrips in various directions between north and southwest from the Budapest area.)

sdsearch

Well, I did my stay, and on the originally planned weekdays, and I did not have any of the traffic problems forecast.

One thing that helped a lot: They start breakfast at 6:00 am (whereas the Hilton "Castle" didn't start it till 6:45 am in the restaurant and not until 7 am in the executive lounge; and an indie hotel I stayed in in Miskolcz also didn't start breakfast till 7 am).

So the day I headed for the Danube Bend, I started out driving around 6:40, and in less than half hour I was through Budapest and onto the 11 going north toward the Danube Bend towns. That's not much worse than the (prorated) amount of time it took me to get into town for dinner at 7:30 or 8 pm. There was a few minutes of slow traffic right at the point where the M1 ended, but onlyl a few minutes, and after that no problem.

I was going in the other direction on the M1 every other morning, but looking at the other side, I never saw problems on the inbound M1 at the Budaors point. OTOH, I did have plenty of traffic jams out in the country with so many places having one direction of travel due repaving half of a two-lane highway, plus once a bad accident on the either the M1 or M7 almost an hour outside Budapest (outbound in the morning).

Plat priveleges were kinda confusing. They claimed I would be charged 5 Euros for breakfast, but never was. They did make me buy Internet access (over $20 for 12 hours cumulative access, cumulative only if you keep logging out instead of just shutting off your laptop). However, the Internet access didn't work much at all from my 3rd floor room, so I had to keep coming downstairs (where I could plug my laptop into the wall) to use the Internet. I complained about this, and they said they'd look into it, but it never got fixed.

They said I'd get a free newspaper in the afternoon on my door as a Plat, but I only got that twice (on a 5-night stay). Both times an English paper, but different ones the two times! They implied I could get a late checkout as a Plat, but I had a morning flight my last day, so that was of no use to me.

They like to quote everything in Euros, but my bill was actually itemized in Forints (local currency).

On busy nights (during the week) they have a buffet dinner for about 20 Euros (again, the Euro quoting!). Both the dinner buffet and breakfast buffet had a good selection.

The hotel caters to tour buses, especially lots of Japanese tour groups. As a result, there's Japanese options at breakfast.

There's an elevator to the 2nd and 3rd floor, but no elevator nor ramp to the 1st floor, which is half a flight up from the lobby level. It looked a line insane to see those tour groups struggle with giant roller bags getting them up or down those stairs with dozens of people trying to do it at the same time. Since the hotel was refurbished (it looks very nice, clean, and modern inside now, along with the new HI logos and such), I don't know why they couldn't have designed a ramp in.

And that's the thing about this hotel: Lots of little things they didn't give thought to:

1. No ramp for 1st floor.

2. Free internet is available at one laptop in the lobby with an attached printer. But they won't let you print a web page! So no way to print a boarding pass!!! The manager said it was for "security". The manager did offer to print from his computer, but that meant I had to give him the URL of my airline, my login, and have him log in as me, and step him through printing the boarding pass. Yikes!

3. There is only a shower. The housekeeping routine is to put the floor mat folded up inside the show on top of the drain! I have never seen this placment at any other hotel. One morning I ran the shower with hot water for a few minutes to steam some wrinkles out of clothes (they don't provide an iron or any other way of steaming out wrinkles!). Well, the bathroom started flooding, because the folded floor mat had acted as a drain stopper! What an idiotic practice, to place the folded floor mat there!

On the other hand, some nice things, like they provided real soap and real shampoo (in addition to the standard Euro one-does-all dispenser). The minibar fridge had room for at least two bottles of water, maybe a bit more.

Although I semi-faced the M1, I did not have any problems with noise (from either outside or inside the hotel).

If you can put with internet not necessarily working from your room, I would therefore probably recommend this hotel to someone who's there with a car and primarily not needing to go into / toward Budpest by day. (I had no problems going into Buda in the evening for dinner.)

It was very easy to get to the airport from the hotel. Just get on the M1 going away from the city, get on the M7, and get on the M0 by which point there are signs to the airport the rest of the way. Took maybe somewhat more than half an hour but seemed much simpler than going the "more direct" route through the city.

It was also very easy to find the hotel in a car, following the directions the hotel gave (Budaors "Central" exit, etc).

I found it no problem to walk to the Tesco/food court/mall across the street, nor to walk the crossover walkway to the McDonald's/MediaMart across the M1. But especially if you don't speak the language and are "picky" about food, the local food options may be limited for you.

abhilife2001

Thanks for the detailed post sdsearch.. Good u had a pleasant experience..

IIRC, I was confirmed by the hotel that Plats were given free breakfast even on award stays.. I had booked a PB there but had to cancel it at the last moment..

Also, I believe its a common practice in europe ( hv seen it in Czech, Russia, Poland, Hungary ) that they usually quote in Euros but billing will be done in local currency since those as per local regulations..

yann

Hello,
Any recent experience with this hotel?
It seems like it may have been refurbished in the last few years.
Is it worth the 10k points it is going for?
Thanks in advance.

stimpy

I stayed a few years or so ago and it was fine. I had my own car so getting around was easy. I also stayed at the IC when I was exploring Budapest. But this hotel is easier for visiting Székesfehérvár which is a very interesting and historical city.

Crofton138

I stayed at this hotel a couple of years ago, my only reason to select this hotel was to finish off an accelerate target (needed a Holiday Inn stay). Is it worth 10k points (approx £40), yes. However, apart from that cheap rate, there are no good things about staying at this hotel unless you are trying to save money and there are no alternatives in Budapest. I haven't looked but there are normally lots of hotels around the city centre with very competitve rates that are significantly better. I know IHG has a low footprint in Budapest so I sometimes switch to Hilton or Accor, if the InterContinental isn't available or too expensive. The Hilton Garden Inn is a very nice hotel with a very reasonable room rate.

jaymar01

I visit Budapest three/four times a year. On my last trip (October 2019 ), I stayed here for about a week.

I was very pleasantly impressed with the hotel, can recommend the property, and will stay here again.

Plus
Very comfortable hotel with excellent beds.
Good breakfast and/or free coffee at the bar.
Nearby mall with a Tesco and Rossmann a short walk away.
Easy/inexpensive to get into Budapest, even without a car. Bus lines 172/173 stop very close to the hotel, and take you to the end of Metro line #4 . It takes about 20 minutes by bus/metro to get into the center of the city.
An incredible bargain at 10,000 points a day.

Minus
The biggest downside to the hotel is location, as you’re not in the center city…….but I didn’t find it a problem.

I've stayed at the Hilton, Radisson, Ibis, Courtyard by Marriott, Park Inn etc. over the years, and this hotel is as good as any of those.

If you’re looking at an inexpensive option, this is the way to go.

Additional Note: The front half the hotel faces the freeway, and the back half overlooks the tennis courts. Ask for a room in the rear of the hotel, as you can open the windows, and it's a lot quieter.

yann

Thanks for the replies.
This is not our first visit either, so we don't need to be in the center (we'll probably also want to visit nearby cities/places).
We'll have a car, so that seems like a good enough option.
We'll probably give it a try.