smartments Berlin Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin

I've spend almost two weeks at this hotel and I had to checkout earlier than what I paid for. Here are reasons you should avoid this place:

1. Poor management. Poor management.

2. The location of garbage room is unclear and when you find it there is usually too much garbage that your's doesn't fit.

3. Unstable internet connection that interrupts video calls and meetings every 5 minutes or so.

4. Construction work and construction workers in, and around, the building all the time. Smoking cigarettes in front of the lobby which makes the lobby smell bad during the day.

5. Chaotic cleaning schedule and improper when done. They sometimes forgot to change our towels.

6. There are times when there's not a single person in the hotel from the staff responsible for the security of the rooms (see the next item). So your only connection with the staff is a WhatsApp chat which gets replaced by AI chatbot at some point in the day. As a person who works on AI research, I know how useless they can be for unseen situations.

7. No one checks how many people are using the same room. So there was this lady our next door who was partying with her friends late Friday night like 11pm with four XL sized men and they were trying to open our door by mistake. We could hear the door handle being pushed then someone laughs and goes to the other room.

8. Poor sound isolation: you can hear every time someone walks, talks or laughs in the corridor. Also due to the construction work you'll hear drillings and such from morning to evening.

9. Poor lighting, I don't know if it is a German thing to keep the room dark. So you may ignore this point if you're fine with a generally dark room.

There were more items but I didn't take notes from the early days as I was hoping that it is temporary.
Of course there are points that made me think that this is a good hotel (at the time of booking), which is being near the city center, trams and S bahn.

The first room that I was in had so much mold that I had to keep the bathroom door closed and run in while holding my breath to use the washroom. The mold was so bad that it didn't matter if the door was closed, my body was reacting so badly to this. I tried messaging the host MULTIPLE times but never got no response. I had to reach out to ******* then I received an email saying the property will change you rooms. The receptionist took me into 3 different rooms which ALL still had mold so I had no choice but to choose the one with the least amount. I tried my best to avoid the bathroom but I had to shower at one point and wash my hair.. I go to turn on the shower and it DOESN'T WORK!!!!! little droplets of water came out which went from scorching hot to freezing cold. Once again, I reached out to the property and never got a response. The lights flickered, there was no toiletries, and I even had to go to the store to buy toilet paper because they didn't leave me enough. Needless to say this place was an absolute NIGHTMARE from the very first day to the last. ******* tried to reach out to them in hopes of getting me a refund so I could go elsewhere but the property refused and ******* did not help any further. This makes me never want to book another listing through *******, knowing these are the properties they have listed and are not willing to compensate or help in any way.


It won't let me post the videos of the shower and the lights flickering but I have them.

My room was not available (online check-in only on weekends) and I couldn't check in. I had to book another hotel at short notice that evening.