Hotel Pontsteiger

Small, friendly, quiet. Best rooms on the water. Very friendly night manager. Only 10 parking places at 20 Euros a day. The breakfast was a bag hung on the door, or 5 Euros off at the restaurant, not explained prior to booking.

Despite the COVID-19 protocols, the friendly staffs managed to be efficient. My check-in was at 3:30pm. I was assigned to one of the smaller rooms next to their café. The windows are facing south-west. Entering the room at around 4pm was an experience! A glorious evening sun greets you, and you’ll find yourself looking at a beautifully made facade, that separates the shower and the living area, marvelously glowing and welcoming you. The tasteful interior deco is also paired with some Jacob Jensen appliances. This little gem was a great discovery for me.

Great hotel! This is a nice and peaceful location. The views of the water are excellent. You can not hear any noise from outside. Elsie at the front desk is very helpful. Thanks for a great stay!

We booked this hotel during the Amsterdam Hotelnacht event. As locals, we are always interested in finding good hotels for our family, friends and other guest to stay when they come visit. As the Pontsteiger building is a true landmark, we were really looking forward to our stay. However, the experience left us rather disappointed! We indicated during booking that we would really like to have a room with water views. When we arrived, we were told that they were not able to accommodate that request because they are fully booked (fair enough). The receptionist noticed our disappointment and offered us an upgrade to a junior suite for a small extra payment. We agreed to that. After we had paid for the upgrade, she told us that there is an issue with the bath tub though. The hot water would be leaking a bit, so either we don’t use it or she brings some extra towels. As we were really looking forward to use the tub, we said yes to the towels, but it felt weird to rent out a room with an issue and ask for extra payment. On a side note, I realized the next morning that the upgrade payment never showed on my bill? We also were informed about the “issue” with breakfast. Our booking included breakfast. She explained that during Corona, they cannot serve buffet style breakfast (also very understandable). But the alternate “options” left us rather flabbergasted: we could choose to 1) receive a breakfast box with a croissant, juice and cereal bar (as 4* hotel breakfast!?!), or 2) eat a la carte in the restaurant. But there we wouldn’t be served a breakfast, but would have to pay and receive a 5€ voucher pp. Including a breakfast and then offering a 5€ box or voucher is certainly not okay, despite Corona. When we finally arrived in the room (nr 20), we were a bit surprised to find it on the ground floor. The room itself is beautiful and the view was very nice (no complaints there at all). Because of the ground floor, there are boats passing by and there’s is very little to no privacy though. More disturbing (as already pointed out by some other reviews) was the cleanliness of the room. The windows were incredibly dirty (sad in a room that you charge extra for because of the view), and I found hair on the toilet floor. Overall, it didn’t feel super very clean, not a good sign during a pandemic. Also the room doesn’t have a fridge/mini-bar. As we received extra towels to deal with the minor problem with hot water, I was excited to use the tub and enjoy the view while taking a bath. However, the minor leak turned out to be a rather big problem and within minutes the room was flooded. We gave up on the tub and called the reception to report that it wasn’t minor and that we would need some extra towels for the water. The receptionist came with the towels, but didn’t offer to send someone help us dry the floor and when I asked her if she could organize all the wet towels to be picked up, she seemed overwhelmed and ended up taking them herself. She also pointed out that the room was taken out of the system now until fixed, but seemed to be okay to sell it to us?! There was no compensation mentioned for the troubles. All in all, I think the hotel has potential. The rooms are nicely designed and the view is beautiful. But they are far far far away from 4* service and breakfast. For us, not something we would recommend to our local friends for a staycation, nor to our guests...

Small and cosy hotel, great staff