Hotel Wartmann am Bahnhof in Winterthur

We booked a family room in August, but the air conditioning was broken from the start. The front desk was reluctant to change our room at first and asked us to wait at least 30 minutes to “test” the AC. Since it was completely broken, no amount of waiting would have helped. I don’t understand why they insisted we wait 30 minutes. Besides, the bathroom door couldn’t close properly. Because the AC wasn’t working, they eventually switched us to two double rooms for the first night. Ironically, as soon as we opened the door to the double room, it felt cool right away—completely different from the hot and stuffy family room.

Since the first family room’s AC couldn’t be fixed, on the second day we were moved to another family room, but its AC was also broken and provided no cooling at all. We had to rely on an open window and an electric fan just to get through the night. To make things worse, the window couldn’t fully close, and the bathroom drain was so slow that water overflowed onto the floor.

It’s true that many accommodations in Switzerland don’t install air conditioning because the air is naturally cool when you open the windows. But if a hotel advertises that it has AC, it SHOULD make sure that the AC actually work. Telling guests to just “open the window and use a fan” is not an acceptable explanation.

On the first night, the family room came with one large and one small fan, but the small fan couldn’t rotate properly and made strange noises.

The AC in the double room worked fine, but in both family rooms we stayed in, the AC did not work. This makes me suspect that all the family rooms may have the same issue.