Gewandhaus Dresden, Autograph Collection, Germany [Master Thread]
Jul 8, 2015, 8:25 am
#1
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Gewandhaus Dresden, Autograph Collection, Germany [Master Thread]
New Autograph Collection property. Website doesn't have a category listed yet.
http://news.marriott.com/2015/07/aut...ollection.html
"Having reopened in April 2015 following an extensive refurbishment, Gewandhaus Dresden – located close to Dresden's celebrated Frauenkirche - has been transformed under the direction of well-known Düsseldorf architectural firm, STUDIO architects. Located in the heart of the baroque city center of Dresden, the hotel building is steeped in history, dating back to 1768, and formally an important centre for cloth making. The comprehensive restoration process has brought the 97-room property to a luxurious modern finish that also reflects the origins of the baroque edifice.
Gewandhaus Dresden is in a prime location just a short stroll from the Opera House, and close to Asisi Panometer Dresden, Fürstenzug and Zwinger. The popular Town Hall Tower is just five minutes by car along with Dresden City Museum."
Two things:
Renovation Information – Please be aware the pool, sauna and fitness area will be closed for renovations until the end of August 2015. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Please Note – Please note that local lodging tax is not included in the stated rates and must be paid in the hotel directly, as of July 1 2015. (They also have a warning on the home page re: the city tax - sounds like Dresden is going the Rome route w/ the tax situation).
Rates look pretty reasonable. Look forward to first trip report.
Cheers.
http://news.marriott.com/2015/07/aut...ollection.html
"Having reopened in April 2015 following an extensive refurbishment, Gewandhaus Dresden – located close to Dresden's celebrated Frauenkirche - has been transformed under the direction of well-known Düsseldorf architectural firm, STUDIO architects. Located in the heart of the baroque city center of Dresden, the hotel building is steeped in history, dating back to 1768, and formally an important centre for cloth making. The comprehensive restoration process has brought the 97-room property to a luxurious modern finish that also reflects the origins of the baroque edifice.
Gewandhaus Dresden is in a prime location just a short stroll from the Opera House, and close to Asisi Panometer Dresden, Fürstenzug and Zwinger. The popular Town Hall Tower is just five minutes by car along with Dresden City Museum."
Two things:
Renovation Information – Please be aware the pool, sauna and fitness area will be closed for renovations until the end of August 2015. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Please Note – Please note that local lodging tax is not included in the stated rates and must be paid in the hotel directly, as of July 1 2015. (They also have a warning on the home page re: the city tax - sounds like Dresden is going the Rome route w/ the tax situation).
Rates look pretty reasonable. Look forward to first trip report.
Cheers.
Jul 26, 2015, 2:36 pm
#3
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Wesseling, NRW, Germany
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Interesting - after losing the Renaissance several years ago Dresden was SPG-territory for me, but now I have a choice again - great development. Look forward for the first stay reports, especially in regard to Elite Benefits - my next trip to DRS is not before the end of the year...
Greetings - Dirk
Greetings - Dirk
Jul 27, 2015, 8:15 am
#4
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Sep 5, 2015, 7:19 pm
#5
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Finally got around to writing a review - I relocated last month so I've been a bit busy since I visited! Warning, it may be a bit long.
The wife and I visited Dresden in early August as sort of a last-minute weekend trip before we moved back to the States. We'd been living in Frankfurt for the last couple of years, and wanted to take advantage of easy weekend European trips while we still could
Due to bad luck with Deutsche Bahn this past summer and a mutual hate of long car rides, we booked a cheap Lufthansa fare. The flight out was pretty uneventful, at under 40 minutes there was barely time for a drink service before we began the descent into DRS. I didn't get any pictures of DRS, it's a pretty nice airport, albeit rather quiet! We got our bags, grabbed a taxi and headed to the hotel for check-in.
The first thing that hit us when we got out of the taxi was the heat - Germany experienced a terrible heat wave that weekend, with temperatures approaching 37C (nearly 100F). Otherwise, check-in went very smoothly - the front desk staff was very professional! They offered me several welcome gifts: two free drink coupons for the cake shop in their lobby (which I will cover later), and a couple of snacks shown below. The cones were a beef tartar appetizer from (M)eatery - the hotel's in-house steak restaurant - and were quite tasty. Note: the snacks are apparently the platinum arrival gift; turns out the check-in clerk misread my Gold status as Platinum. Oh well
The hotel itself is in a beautiful restored building, and has many cool details and ornate woodwork. I've stayed in a couple other Autograph Collection properties in Europe and found this one much more impressive than the others I've visited - old and ornate, but still homey and well-appointed.
We booked the standard room but we were upgraded to a Superior room on the second floor. It was a decent-sized room, complete with a couch. I had to get an SSID/password from the front desk to access the WiFi (it's not an obvious network name), but besides that the internet worked great! Sadly the pool was indeed closed for renovations but we were happy to see that the room's air conditioning worked really well, particularly for Europe - well-received after the intense heat
The room also had a rather cool marble bathroom, pictured below. The tub is a large whirlpool tub, and also has a shower attachment. There also was a seperate small half-bathroom with the toilet and a second sink, located across from the bathroom. My only complaint about the bathroom was the rather large step to get into the tub/shower. I'm 5'11" and rather young and found it a little tricky, I'm sure shorter/older people would find it a bit more challenging! I did suggest that the hotel consider having some simple stepstools on hand for such situations (even cheap Ikea ones would do).
We hung out in the room for a bit, then walked to the city center once it had cooled down a little. The hotel is on the edge of the old town, but it's still only about a 10 minute walk to Frauenkirche and the Elbe, and maybe another 5-10 minutes to the Opera House and the Zwinger. There's also a number of restaurants right next to the hotel, including a Mexican restaurant we could see from our room Despite the close proximity, noise thankfully wasn't an issue.
Later that night, we went out for dinner then came back and checked out the hotel bar. The hotel had an interesting bar area - it's basically the back half of the check-in counter. I didn't get a good picture of it, but you can see it in the back of a couple of the stock photos on the Marriott property website. The drink selection was excellent (some truly amazing white wines), albeit not particularly cheap. The bartender was quite friendly as well, we ran into him again the second night we were there. Apparently there is a bar in the (M)eatery as well, although I think it has the same drink selection.
The next morning we got breakfast, served buffet-style in the (M)eatery. The breakfast spread was quite impressive, with a number of hot & cold options as well as a DIY waffle iron (first time I've ever seen one in Europe)!
We left to do some exploring, walking to the Zwinger and a Saturday flea market. From there, we walked by the Opera House and stopped for lunch. With the heat already getting pretty intense yet again (see a theme here?), we headed to the Dresden City Museum for a little relief. It was an impressive collection, well worth visiting!
Later we cashed in our free drink certificates for some coffees at the hotel's cake shop, located just off the lobby. I also tried a slice of a local tart, quite good!
Our final morning we thought about visiting the "new city" on the other side of the Elbe, but due to time restrictions decided to head for the Transparent Factory, a well-known Volkswagen factory about a 15-20 minute walk from the hotel instead. Of course there was a large cycling race going on right in front of it we didn't know about! We walked by the Deutsches Hygiene museum on the way back, a well-known (and huge) German science museum.
Hotel check-out went very smoothly, they did initially try to charge me for breakfast but immediately removed the charges once they realized I was Gold. They also called a taxi for us to head to the airport - there was no taxi queue out front but we didn't have to wait more than 10 mins or so.
So overall I would definitely stay at the Gewandhaus Dresden again and would recommend it to anyone else heading to Dresden! I think the staff is still getting used to Marriott-specific practices but otherwise they seemed throughly professional. I also didn't get as many pictures as I intended, but the property's webpage has some excellent pictures of the building.
The wife and I visited Dresden in early August as sort of a last-minute weekend trip before we moved back to the States. We'd been living in Frankfurt for the last couple of years, and wanted to take advantage of easy weekend European trips while we still could
Due to bad luck with Deutsche Bahn this past summer and a mutual hate of long car rides, we booked a cheap Lufthansa fare. The flight out was pretty uneventful, at under 40 minutes there was barely time for a drink service before we began the descent into DRS. I didn't get any pictures of DRS, it's a pretty nice airport, albeit rather quiet! We got our bags, grabbed a taxi and headed to the hotel for check-in.
The first thing that hit us when we got out of the taxi was the heat - Germany experienced a terrible heat wave that weekend, with temperatures approaching 37C (nearly 100F). Otherwise, check-in went very smoothly - the front desk staff was very professional! They offered me several welcome gifts: two free drink coupons for the cake shop in their lobby (which I will cover later), and a couple of snacks shown below. The cones were a beef tartar appetizer from (M)eatery - the hotel's in-house steak restaurant - and were quite tasty. Note: the snacks are apparently the platinum arrival gift; turns out the check-in clerk misread my Gold status as Platinum. Oh well
The hotel itself is in a beautiful restored building, and has many cool details and ornate woodwork. I've stayed in a couple other Autograph Collection properties in Europe and found this one much more impressive than the others I've visited - old and ornate, but still homey and well-appointed.
We booked the standard room but we were upgraded to a Superior room on the second floor. It was a decent-sized room, complete with a couch. I had to get an SSID/password from the front desk to access the WiFi (it's not an obvious network name), but besides that the internet worked great! Sadly the pool was indeed closed for renovations but we were happy to see that the room's air conditioning worked really well, particularly for Europe - well-received after the intense heat
The room also had a rather cool marble bathroom, pictured below. The tub is a large whirlpool tub, and also has a shower attachment. There also was a seperate small half-bathroom with the toilet and a second sink, located across from the bathroom. My only complaint about the bathroom was the rather large step to get into the tub/shower. I'm 5'11" and rather young and found it a little tricky, I'm sure shorter/older people would find it a bit more challenging! I did suggest that the hotel consider having some simple stepstools on hand for such situations (even cheap Ikea ones would do).
We hung out in the room for a bit, then walked to the city center once it had cooled down a little. The hotel is on the edge of the old town, but it's still only about a 10 minute walk to Frauenkirche and the Elbe, and maybe another 5-10 minutes to the Opera House and the Zwinger. There's also a number of restaurants right next to the hotel, including a Mexican restaurant we could see from our room
Despite the close proximity, noise thankfully wasn't an issue.Later that night, we went out for dinner then came back and checked out the hotel bar. The hotel had an interesting bar area - it's basically the back half of the check-in counter. I didn't get a good picture of it, but you can see it in the back of a couple of the stock photos on the Marriott property website. The drink selection was excellent (some truly amazing white wines), albeit not particularly cheap. The bartender was quite friendly as well, we ran into him again the second night we were there. Apparently there is a bar in the (M)eatery as well, although I think it has the same drink selection.
The next morning we got breakfast, served buffet-style in the (M)eatery. The breakfast spread was quite impressive, with a number of hot & cold options as well as a DIY waffle iron (first time I've ever seen one in Europe)!
We left to do some exploring, walking to the Zwinger and a Saturday flea market. From there, we walked by the Opera House and stopped for lunch. With the heat already getting pretty intense yet again (see a theme here?), we headed to the Dresden City Museum for a little relief. It was an impressive collection, well worth visiting!
Later we cashed in our free drink certificates for some coffees at the hotel's cake shop, located just off the lobby. I also tried a slice of a local tart, quite good!
Our final morning we thought about visiting the "new city" on the other side of the Elbe, but due to time restrictions decided to head for the Transparent Factory, a well-known Volkswagen factory about a 15-20 minute walk from the hotel instead. Of course there was a large cycling race going on right in front of it we didn't know about! We walked by the Deutsches Hygiene museum on the way back, a well-known (and huge) German science museum.
Hotel check-out went very smoothly, they did initially try to charge me for breakfast but immediately removed the charges once they realized I was Gold. They also called a taxi for us to head to the airport - there was no taxi queue out front but we didn't have to wait more than 10 mins or so.
So overall I would definitely stay at the Gewandhaus Dresden again and would recommend it to anyone else heading to Dresden! I think the staff is still getting used to Marriott-specific practices but otherwise they seemed throughly professional. I also didn't get as many pictures as I intended, but the property's webpage has some excellent pictures of the building.
Last edited by chleonard; Sep 5, 2015 at 7:22 pm Reason: Images won't upload
Sep 5, 2015, 7:24 pm
#6
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Oops, images won't upload for some reason. Removed the image links from my post. My pics weren't that great anyway, I'd suggest checking out the property website if you want some good pictures of the hotel 
Sep 16, 2015, 2:26 pm
#10
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Sep 16, 2015, 7:29 pm
#11
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but that breakfast might be the skimpy type breakfast such as that offered at the Ghent Marriott which requires surcharges if you want even a second cup of coffee.
guess we'll have to wait for the first poster to stay and report whether it's full breakfast or less or less with surcharges.
guess we'll have to wait for the first poster to stay and report whether it's full breakfast or less or less with surcharges.
Sep 16, 2015, 8:17 pm
#12
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but that breakfast might be the skimpy type breakfast such as that offered at the Ghent Marriott which requires surcharges if you want even a second cup of coffee.
guess we'll have to wait for the first poster to stay and report whether it's full breakfast or less or less with surcharges.
guess we'll have to wait for the first poster to stay and report whether it's full breakfast or less or less with surcharges.
Just because you had a bad experience at a totally separate property, let's not derail the thread with that. There are other European properties that offer full brekkie, so it's not like Ghent is the norm.
Based chleonard's detailed review it sounds like this property does full brekkie.
Cheers
Sep 16, 2015, 9:10 pm
#13
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not highjacking your post and I know what the Marriott breakfast policy is but all you need do, for example, is read your own sticky for the 2 Autograph Collection props in Lille and Rouen, France where only continental breakfast is provided unless you pay a supplement so it's not only Ghent.
and yes, chleonard's report currently is full breakfast, but other props like JW Khao Lak, JW Phuket, Ren Phuket and Marriott Rayong used to provide breakfast to G/Ps but no longer do as things change.
and yes, chleonard's report currently is full breakfast, but other props like JW Khao Lak, JW Phuket, Ren Phuket and Marriott Rayong used to provide breakfast to G/Ps but no longer do as things change.
Marriott's policy is continental brekkie. If the property does that it's in compliance. If it does more then good for it.
Just because you had a bad experience at a totally separate property, let's not derail the thread with that. There are other European properties that offer full brekkie, so it's not like Ghent is the norm.
Based chleonard's detailed review it sounds like this property does full brekkie.
Cheers
Just because you had a bad experience at a totally separate property, let's not derail the thread with that. There are other European properties that offer full brekkie, so it's not like Ghent is the norm.
Based chleonard's detailed review it sounds like this property does full brekkie.
Cheers
Sep 17, 2015, 8:23 am
#14
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not highjacking your post and I know what the Marriott breakfast policy is but all you need do, for example, is read your own sticky for the 2 Autograph Collection props in Lille and Rouen, France where only continental breakfast is provided unless you pay a supplement so it's not only Ghent.
and yes, chleonard's report currently is full breakfast, but other props like JW Khao Lak, JW Phuket, Ren Phuket and Marriott Rayong used to provide breakfast to G/Ps but no longer do as things change.
and yes, chleonard's report currently is full breakfast, but other props like JW Khao Lak, JW Phuket, Ren Phuket and Marriott Rayong used to provide breakfast to G/Ps but no longer do as things change.
Cheers.
Sep 17, 2015, 6:02 pm
#15
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Posts: 164
As mentioned above, it is indeed full breakfast included for Golds/Plats (and a guest - my wife and I both ate for free) at this property. I was charged the first morning but I think that was just an oversight - they quickly removed the charge when I mentioned my status at checkout. Also seemed like one of the better Marriott breakfast spreads I've seen to date - quite the selection!