Vip Inn Berna Hotel - Lisbon, Portugal 

"Worth every penny"
Posted: Mon, Nov 23 2009
Although the Berna is a little north of "downtown" Lisbon (about a mile) the place was all I could ask for. Nice staff, nearly all speak English. Nice rooms. And the price includes a full breakfast daily from 7a to 10a. The works eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, coffee, tea, espresso, fruit, all breads, juice and cereals, on and on. All of the following are w/in 1 block. Express buses directly to/from airport (3 euros), the metro, several city bus lines to downtown, the Portugal train system, restaurants, supermarkets drugstores etc. I will return..." to Lisbon, I will go back to the Berna.

JG
Posted: Tue, Jun 02 2009
The room are noisy. The room door are very bad.D'ont isole the nois. The comunications are very easy.

AA
Posted: Sat, Feb 07 2009
The Hotel is located near the metro and bus stop. It was situated in a quiet zone, and the room clean.

Unclean, unsafe, appalling customer service
Posted: Tue, Jul 22 2008
Without doubt the worst hotel experience we have ever had. If you are travelling with a baby then don't go near this hotel and, if you're not, I'd still recommend that you think twice if hygiene or customer service matter to you! We were travelling with our 10 month old baby and had booked a room with cot for four nights. The room was on the top floor, two rooms plus a good-sized bathroom and a huge balcony overlooking the bullring (though the balcony surrounds were worn and didn't look particularly safe). The cot, however, was beyond a joke: a dirty travel cot with holes in the mesh sides and packing tape holding it together at the top. When I complained to reception I was offered no apology and told that housekeeping would bring us another cot. 45 minutes and another trip to reception later - our baby crying and desperate for sleep (by this time it was after 9pm) - housekeeping arrived with a replacement: an old wooden cot. The housekeeper wasn't convinced it was particularly steady and suggested we place it against a wall! It, too, was filthy and the wood worn and splintered. Again, we complained to reception and asked to speak to the manager. We were told that there was no manager available until Monday (this was Saturday). We were also told that this was only a three-star hotel - the implication being that if we wanted a safe, clean place for our baby to sleep a three star hotel could not provide this. (We had just spent a happy 3 nights in a two-star IBIS in Coimbra which provided us with everything we needed.) The housekeeper was sent back to our room to retrieve the cot - she was evidently angry and stormed in completely oblivious to our crying baby. At this point, we decided to try elsewhere and found a (five star) hotel also in the VIP chain across the road. The receptionist there was extremely sympathetic and agreed to send a cot over to the Berna for us. To her evident embarrassment she had to call the Berna a number of times before anyone answered and then had to wait another 15 minutes before someone crossed the road to help us over with the cot. The final straw was the next morning at breakfast. We asked for a highchair: the seat was covered in crumbs, the frame thick with dust and there was no safety harness. If the staff are prepared to hand over equipment in such a disgusting state for a baby then I have absolutely no faith in their basic hygiene. We checked out that morning. The hotel had been booked for us by the higher education institution we were visiting: when they contacted the hotel to complain on the Monday they were also told that the Manager was unavailable to speak with them.

Gary Allsopp
Posted: Thu, Jul 03 2008
close to tram station for short trip into city, older hotel and restaurant in hotel was closed. Staff not very friendly or competent, tried to over-charge us twice.