Comfort Hotel Prague - Prague, Czech Republic     

I booked this hotel (wrongly) believing it was within proximity to Ruzyne Airport as I had an early-morning flight. Well, it turned out to be a twenty minutes’ drive away from the airport by car and roughly thirty minutes to the city centre by tram. Otherwise, the verdict of a previous review (“clean, basic, dull”) sums it up. We didn’t experience any problems with the water supply and staff was friendly and competent. The walls are indeed rather thin and I could sense that my neighbour was watching something extremely amusing on television. A bonus is the more or less secure parking free of charge. The rooms were spacious, clean, and well arranged. When checking in we were somewhat scared as we observed a busload full of teenage footballers arriving at the hotel but fortunately they were staying in the main building whilst we got rooms in what appears to be a new annex. It appears that the hotel is mostly booked by tour operators for tourist groups travelling by bus.

Good points: - Good ensuite bathroom with bath and shower and lots of very hot water. A bath is a definite plus for a break in Prague in colder months after walking around the city, and they aren't very commonly found in 2 and 3 star places in the city centre. - Restaurant. I liked the dinner time food much and it was at a very good price. On a small budget I could afford three nice courses most days. I thought the menu was attractive, Czech and international cuisine including a few pasta dishes. What I had was very , very tasty and well cooked and presented. There is a buffet dinner as well as the a la carte I tried, though I did not see the buffets. Usually the a la carte restaurant is separate to the buffet restaurant. - Bar. Fine with a selection and prices I would call relaxing. A 750 ml bottle of nice Brut Czech Champagne (Bohemia Sekt) was only 9 Euros and I enjoyed this a lot. Their wines are nice, especially the Vinohrady wine. The other drinks are cheap also and there is a good selection, especially the German beer Schöfenhoffer which I discovered in a bottle and is really delicious. Czech beer is on tap. - Alcoholic beverages are available throughout the night and morning: There is a vending machine which, as well as soft drinks and chocolate, has 4 different beers and small bottles of red and white wine so you can drink to be merry or to relax at any time (cheap). I don't know if the lobby bar tables are allowed to be used after the bar closes. - Breakfast has a very good amount of choice and was nice, with fruit, though mostly cold food. You can eat as much as you like from the buffet. Lovely strange cornflakes, nice mildly chocolate muesli and lots of fresh bread rolls and slices, cheeses, different cooked meat slices and hot meat portions, apples and oranges, big bowls of youghurts, vegetarian mixtures including tomatoes and lettuce, prunes, shredded carrots like are popular as a side salad in Bulgaria, and a few different dishes of strange food I could not identify looking like pates. Jams and spreadable cheeses and as much coffee and teas as you like of course. A very good selection of different teas. Orange and apple juices. This makes the stay very, very good value. - The room I had is a good size for one person (a reasonable sized twin room) and would be O.K. for two. - No noticeable traffic noise if the window is closed (3rd floor of 10) but occasionally I heard trams (not loud). - A very good selection of city information brochures and also little information cards for most things you would like in the city (also lovely places outside the city for excursions which are seldom written about for tourists), including up to date monthly concert and cultural dates listings. - Room, bathroom and hotel were very clean and well kept, with no suggestion of need for any renovation. - Lifts work well and are quite fast. - There is computer access and so World Wide Web network access: very good quality, very fast connection. - The area Andel is on the tram route, which you might miss if not staying here, and it is worth discovering, especially if like for me, Old Town square and its neighbours are in part really over-familiar. Smichov is also not far. Mala Strana is quite easily accessed as is Strahov from there (alight Ujezd for the funicular to Letna Hill and Strahov). - It takes around thirty minutes on one tram and Metro train, to U Maleho Glena in Mala Strana at night for live music (jazz) where full bottles of wine are very affordable. It might take not much less than this time to walk to this music bar if staying near Wenceslas Square for example (note U Maleho Glena has very cheap bottles of good wine and champagne for those used to Western European prices). For returning after Metro opening hourse, walk a few minutes, take a night tram along this same road to Andel and then a night bus or tram from there, maybe 30 to 40 minutes in total. - The same first tram from the hotel also brings you directly to the Reduta Jazz Club beside Narodni station. I found going out like this easy where I would not bother trying to walk a half hour or so when staying around. - A well equipped gym is close which you can use for a charge (ask reception where this is). - The remote controlled T.V. had two channels in English. - Some people in reviews have suggested the area is "rough", but it seems a nice area to me. I liked it. There are a lot of well ordered and well kept blocks of flats on one side of the road, very nicely painted, with a nice big play area, and the other side of the road has high suburban city villas of some note, rising up behind the road on a slope. This is a quiet area but that the main road is busy. There would be nothing normally to worry about in this area, I am pretty sure. - The well known, small Hotel U Lipy in an attractive five story suburban villa directly opposite the Comfort Hotel, has a very good restaurant and a nice bar. - Excellent opportunities for discovering green parts of the fringe around Prague, for example on Europska, (two trams, half an hour or some lovely scenery by taking further the airport bus to Dejvicka which continues on Europska where there are some lovely places to get lost in, ideally with a compass). - Also a few stops from Motol on the bus from the airport to near the hotel (to Nove Butovice) there is a truly gorgeous and striking city glen, quite lush and with lovely simple modernist architecture where a university is. If you take the bus which goes to N. Butovice from the airport you can see this and you will probably find and impulse to return. This is a part of Prague really worth seeing and walking in. Also, the really lovely forest between the airport and Homomerice is easily accessed from the Nove Butovice bus, alighting very near the airport when you see it, across a field or two (go on). You can just walk from the airport (instead of taking the Homomerice bus from Dejvicka). I really, really recommend this in fact and see the meadows just on the edge of Homomerice. If you want something different to the old buildings and if the river and castle view have gotten familiar to you, try this. I have spent days walking in this forest . (Earplugs are a good idea for this though as there are quite low planes, but the visit would be definitely very worth it as it is tranquil inside and away from everything despite the planes overhead.) Dobricka is a lovely, hilly, pastoral village near the edge of Prague, not long before the big glen I described and on the same bus route to Nove Butovice which you take for the hotel, and which could be right in the middle of the country. You could stop for a short walk and to drink or eat (little choice). The airport tram to Nove Butovice is worth it for this alone (for Comfort Hotel, change at Motol). But come here and walk around and relax. It is very refreshing after built up central Prague, a perfect change. Other places to walk around not far from the hotel. It is a good idea to get a full city suburbs map from airport transport desk or in central Prague. Bad points: - No sleep at all one night because of the very loud T.V. noise coming in through the walls, from before midnight until near breakfast time. It was really bad. I couldn't put up with that for more than one night and it could ruin a short holiday if experienced for just one night. - The room was basic with no elements of a "comfort hotel" except a bath tub. (It should be noted though that any room with any ensuite facilities would be excellent value at this price in the Prague suburbs). This hotel is a bit more basic than some typical British Comfort Hotels, though around the same size as Travelodge rooms or a bit bigger, and not much different. I would expect an armchair of some sort in a hotel which states it is a three star property. - Wheras I don't mind or quite like the location itself, in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, one walk for fourty minutes to an hour or so would cover everything, and then there is nearly nothing to do here. Perhaps be aware that this is not near the sights to be seen. Perhaps it suits certain kinds of travellers and I am one of them. However, there is U Lipy (see good points), and the food here is a actually a reason to travel to the area. - The Comfort Hotel is not a central hotel, so there is no point in complaining about the position, I suppose. Take a central hotel if you want a central hotel. Don't complain that a suburban hotel is not a city centre hotel! - For those interested in an airport hotel, this is nowhere near Prague airport. It takes around 35 minutes by bus and tram plus a few more waiting time after the bus for the tram, and I suppose around 25 to 30 minutes by car if traffic is not heavy. (However, in times of heavy traffic, the drive to the airport may be up to twenty minutes shorter than from the centre of Prague.) The company do advertise this as an airport hotel, which amounts to something fraudulent, I suppose, and no less. - What is also fraudulent is that the Choice Hotels web site says that this hotel has a solarium, gym and sauna. It has none of these. I took a printout of the official Choice Hotels web site description with facilities listed with me, as I had read hours before my flight left, here on tripadvisor, that hotel guests may only use the sauna of a neighbouring hotel. I thought this would be O.K., if true, but even that was not true. The receptionist I spoke to bluntly and clearly said there is no sauna, no gym and no solarium. I showed her the printout of the official hotel web site, saying "This is from Choice Hotels". She said "Oh dear" and photocopied the printout, and gave me back my copy with the information highlighted in coloured pen. But no apology at all, or explanation. I suppose that is very embarrasing for hotel staff when their employer, a huge accommodation company, is selling the hotel with bluntly false information. It is not a small mistake, as there are no relaxation facilities at all, nothing beyond eating and drinking options. The receptionist said there is a gym you can pay to use if you go on the tram one short stop along, but there is no sauna near the hotel and there is no agreement with another hotel to use theirs. There is a solarium I saw beside the hotel. The receptionist suggested I may find a sauna in the centre of Prague, and gave me a number of Prague Walks brochures. I wonder if she was thinking of my fitness, or acting kind of automatically, or in embarassment. - Soon after I turned up for breakfast one morning there was no orange juice in the jug and I asked "Is there any orange juice?" I received a flat "No.". No refill came nor an apology for that. There was apple juice left on this morning but it was so watered down, it is better to describe it as apple flavoured water. That was the only taste of juice for breakfast that day though the orange juice was lovely on the other days I stayed and I had glasses and glasses of it. - Terrible positioning of sockets in the room. I had to lie down on the ground and crawl under a table to plug in a travel iron or portable computer, sometimes inhabiting the area for a few minutes, and you are liable to hit your head. - No coffee or tea tray or kettle. I really did expect there to be a kettle and had brought different flavoured teas and a ground coffee cup filter. Three star hotels definitely have tea and coffee trays. - I don't mind that there is no Wi-fi Web access. I don’t really want to pay £10 to £15 for 24 hours as is the common price in hotels, and use it for at most an hour and a half a day. The internet access they did have, listed as a good point, is quite expensive however, at over £4 per hour where £1.50 to £2 would be common in the city centre, but faster and better quality than anywhere else I have accessed the Web. No printer attatched to the computer. However the nice receptionist suggested I use a reception computer to access and print a boarding pass from, for no cost. Summary: I suppose on the whole, I wouldn't recommend the hotel more than I would recommend the hotel because I am annoyed that the visit I was looking forward to with a gym and sauna turned out not to happen. Also because there is no internal soundproofing at all where there really should be. But considering if you wouldn’t expect the facilities I had expected, I suppose I would recommend the hotel. If the facilities I thought were in place actually were at the price I paid, I suppose I would be reporting "Definitely come here", and, "A great value hotel." I was expecting an excellent bargain hotel with good facilities and came across a good bargain of a basic hotel with basic, quite spacious rooms near to some really worth visiting parts of the suburbs and not too far from the centre by tram. At this location though, it would be a really good thing to offer a sauna and gym, to make staying inside the hotel for periods a really nice experience. The hotel is a big place so many would benefit, even if there were a charge of a few pounds a day to guests. A hotel with slightly more basic Travelodge style rooms in the suburbs at a great price and with good eating and drinking options is what it is. It is a good budget option, at only a couple of pounds more than the price of a travel hostel dorm bed in the centre and for that you have an ensuite bathroom with bath. As with other hotels in Prague: you can book through ONLINE TRAVEL AGENTS and save substantially. I think Hotelopia has the best prices, at just over half of the first travel agency I looked at online (Marys.cz who usually have lower prices than this one). The tea and coffee in the bar is well priced, though I wanted to make coffee for my flask and make my own hot chocolate at bedtime. The lack of a hot drinks tray with kettle is really bad, I thought. As there are no facilities, a stay here might be a little boring if by yourself and staying in the hotel or close vicinity, unless like me you want to explore outside of the centre. On the other hand, that is not really why people will come here generally. But then again you can get drunk in the lobby bar. For seasoned travellers to Prague it is really a good idea to stay here and see the green spaces around the edge of the city and some suburbs, going in to the familiar old central areas when you want this. You are likely to meet travellers also in the lobby bar if you want to and make a good effort. There is a bar a short walk away from the hotel and a nice little cafe a short walk in the other direction. I mention again the excellent U Lipy Hotel restaurant and nice bar. My recommendation would be for if, like me, you are familiar with central Prague, and wish to get to know a bit more of the "real" Prague where the tourists aren't common, and to experience green areas also, and also city places like Andel and Smichov to stay here. It would be O.K. also for going over to Vinohrady and parts of the New Town, and, why not, Zizkov and more though not so handy for this side of Prague but the metro is fine anyway. Andel is the first metro station the tram comes to, so change there or wait until the tram gets to Karlovo Namesti, I.P. Pavlova or Namesti Miru on the same tram from the hotel (all of these areas to me are more worth checking out than wandering yet again in The Old Town as, like so many travellers, that is familiar to me). Check www.dpp.cz or a tram stop for all the stops on the night trams 58 and 59 for returning, if staying out in or near any of these or other less central areas. You can write them down. Near The Prague Comfort Hotel are the Hotel Golf, Hotel U Lipy and the Stary Pivovar Hotel, all of which I have stayed in before and they are all O.K. at least. There is not much to distinguish between any of these four except U Lipy which has more comfortable rooms, good eating and drinking places, and is a nice villa. I think I remember it has a sauna and small but adequate gym room and it is pricier. One thing to say is The Comfort Hotel is definitely a two star standard hotel with quite spacious rooms, and not really a three star hotel as they claim, with the only three star feature being the bath tub. Some agencies I saw had it as a two star place, but the hotel itself displays three stars. With a sauna, solarium and gym as claimed by the owners, I would change my mind and give it a worthy though generally basic three star award, and I would recommend it fully also then, and there would be something to do around here without getting on a tram (though that's easy and they are frequent). It was very cheap with Hotelopia (I paid £17.20 each night for a large single with ensuite bath and large, nice breakfast). The journeys of half an hour by tram to and from the centre are O.K. though I think something you might tire of after most of a week. But, on the other hand I got to gradually more appreciate the tram trips on this visit and I definitely think this helped my conception of travel and may help with future travel. (One can tire of the theme park element of travel, and this can be something which is not really you, and you do begin to appreciate more "real" life and real life in travel when experienced for a while.) If you are not used to staying in suburbs and if taking the bus or tram might put you off a bit, you can easily get used to it. I love suburbs and especially in a city like Prague where there are swarms of people in the centre and one feels sometimes one is in a circus rather than travelling, experiencing the real world. There is something lovely about the quietness of a fairly interesting but also in some ways fairly insignificant suburb such as this. Just be aware that you might want to collapse around dinner time or some other time of the day, and you have to figure the half hour or so tram ride back to the hotel, calculating the nearest stop. Trams were frequent for me always at all times of the day and night, I hardly waited going in both directions. But maybe there would be times you would be waiting ten to fifteen minutes for one before the half hour journey, I don't know. At night, the night trams (58 or 59) are convenient, from Narodni environs and the other side of the river also, Mala Strana and Andel, pretty frequent actually, and a little shorter than day time trams. So there is no need really to pay a lot for a taxi, and if you do need to, you can pay a smaller amount for a taxi to a central tram stop (Narodni Trida is a good one, beside the Metro station). A taxi would really be a noticeable amount of money the full way out to The Comfort Hotel, and not necessary as the trams really are fine.