Al Habtoor Palace Budapest, Preferred Hotels & Resorts

Staff

The staff were super friendly with no exception, the location is perfect (located in front a park and next to fashion street) and they have car parking for a daily rate

The room sound isolation is not perfect, but that wouldn't stop me from going there again

nice spacy room breakfast was good location excellent

fitness room very small and old equipment

Let me start with what the Al Habtoor Palace gets right, because it is a great deal. The rooms are genuinely excellent, the location is convenient, and the atmosphere is exactly what you hope for from a property in this class. On the accommodation alone, I would have no hesitation in recommending it. Unfortunately, my experience was shaped less by the hotel itself than by a series of staff and billing errors that began almost on arrival and never really stopped. It started at breakfast, where I was told my breakfast was not included or paid for, something that turned out to be incorrect once it was actually checked. The check-out time was then changed on me. These would have been minor irritations on their own, but they set the tone for what followed. The real problem was the billing. After the first night, the hotel charged an additional €500 to my account. The next morning, a further €1,000 was taken. To be clear: the accommodation had already been paid in full, well in advance. What made it worse was that I received two different explanations for the same charges. In the first version, I was told a "system error" had caused the hotel to try to recover the value of the stay because it believed the room had not been paid for, even though it had well over that amount. In the second version, I was told that every time I ordered food, the system independently set a limit and withdrew additional funds to "protect the hotel's funds", despite the fact that a deposit had already been paid. Neither explanation inspires confidence, and the two together inspire even less. Being charged €1,500 in extra holds over two days, for a stay that was fully settled in advance, is not the kind of thing you expect from a hotel at this level. So, in summary: the hotel is excellent, and on comfort and setting I have few complaints. But errors like these genuinely spoil the stay, and they are entirely within the staff's power to prevent.