Hampton by Hilton Aachen Tivoli in Aachen

⸻

A decent and clean hotel with a good location and breakfast. This could have been a very positive review and experience — if not for one major drawback: whether your stay is pleasant or unpleasant depends entirely on which staff shift you happen to encounter.

I booked a room for one night and paid by card at check-in. The payment was successfully processed — the funds were withdrawn from my account, and the terminal showed a successful transaction. However, the receptionist said she couldn’t see the payment in their system and asked me to pay again using another terminal.

After double-checking my banking app and confirming that the payment had gone through, I refused to pay a second time, explaining that I had already been charged. Another employee joined in, trying to explain something unclear about their payment system and kept insisting I make another payment.

After half an hour of unnecessary stress, back-and-forth discussions, and demands for a second payment, I was finally allowed to check in after a phone call to the manager — but only after I left my personal information in case the hotel failed to sort things out on their end.

I’m a very understanding person — technical issues can happen, and perhaps there was a real glitch in their system. But I want to stress that for a hotel belonging to a well-known chain, such rude and unprofessional behavior from staff is absolutely unacceptable, especially when aggressively demanding double payment for a single stay.

Thank you to the young woman (unfortunately I didn’t get her name) who handled my check-out and helped ease the unpleasant impression from the previous shift by politely resolving the issue and apologizing for her colleagues’ behavior.

Still, I would not recommend this hotel if you’re looking to have a smooth and pleasant stay.