Description: With check in completed I headed for my room. The lifts only work if you hold your room card to the panel below the controls. This is not unusual these days but still causes some guests confusion. My room was on the fourth floor and when I stepped out of the lift the lights came on. I rather like motion detecting corridor lighting although it’s nothing new and German hotels have used it for years. In the Prizeotel, when the lights come on you get hit by a wave of colour and pattern. The curvy line patterned tiles from the ground floor had morphed into curvy line carpet with grey and green lines on a black background. Now that’s a really bold and brave choice for a hotel corridor as black shows every spec of dirt. The walls are grey with the door recesses picked out in lime green. The room numbers are woven into the carpet design on the floor.

Entrance to the room is by holding your room card against the door panel. Inside there’s a slot to put the card to work the power but in my room it didn’t actually need to be in place for the power to work. I’m not sure if that was a fault or if it was designed to be that way. The rooms are small and bright and ‘pared down’ would be a polite way to describe their minimalist approach to furnishings. The room is dominated by the double bed which takes up most of the space. You can get around it to everything else without having to climb over it but there’s little in the way of spare space. Could you swing a cat? Probably not but a hamster might find enough room. It’s definitely a no-cartwheel hotel room though.

The bed has a ledge that surrounds it which I found pretty annoying. At the sides, the ledge curves out to become built in bedside tables which I thought was pretty clever. These table-ledges aren’t large, but there was room for my phone, tablets, and a glass of water without having to squeeze everything too much. It’s round the rest of the bed that the ledge is annoying. If you want to sit on the edge or lie on the bed with your legs hanging over the end (sounds odd but that’s exactly how I flopped onto it on arrival) this stupid sticky-outy ledge cuts into the backs of your legs. To compensate for the ledge, the mattress was superb and extraordinarily comfortable and of course – as reported by my colleague – I only got a single duvet on the double bed. Luckily the room temperature was such that this wasn’t a problem.

In addition to the bed, you get a desk with a small chair, a small hanging area (I won’t call it a wardrobe as it’s just a rail tucked behind a piece of laminate, a flat area that could perhaps be intended as a bag shelf, a flat screen TV with an oval mirror wrapped around it, a small rail to hang your coat and a lovely bright pink up-lighter lamp. The carpets are a very unsoothing lime green and black swirly pattern which will make you glad that you sleep with your eyes closed.

The bathroom is small but cleverly designed. You’ll find all the obvious things – loo, sink, shower as well as a less obvious feature like the double-head shaped mirror on a glass wall above the sink. In my room this same mirror design was also on the other side of that wall in the main bedroom. The shower looked to me as if it would leak all over the bathroom as the cubicle was set higher than the rest of the bathroom by about 6 inches and the shower head seemed to be pointing directly at the door. I was surprised and relieved to find that despite this illogical layout, the shower did have enough space and didn’t dribble all over the room. This being a ‘budget’ hotel, you can of course forget the little bottles of smellies but I think most travellers would agree that hotels at all price points have been cutting back on such things. Instead you’ll find wall-mounted dispensers of ‘hair and body wash’. Don’t forget to take your own supplies if you need them. The towels provided are surprisingly soft and fluffy although I’m always peeved to get only a single bath towel as I need two due to having long hair. Even so, I managed OK with the combination of the single bath and hand towel provided.

Any trendy hotel knows that what the budget traveller – and the not so budget traveller too – wants is free wi-fi and that’s what you’ll get. The log in needs just your room number and surname in order to work and the service is entirely adequate for most needs.

Breakfast costs around €11 a day and is served on the ground floor. The quality is OK but it is only a cold breakfast so if you’re hoping to gorge on German sausage you’ll need to go elsewhere. By day 3 I was pretty much bored with everything on offer. The coffee is excellent though and beats the stuff I’ve had in all the other Bremen hotels by a long way. There’s plenty to eat but if you’re there and spending your own money rather than travelling for work, you can easily save your euros and pick up a coffee and bun in the railway station where there are lots of different eating places.

I was surprised at how good the Prizeotel was. I’d heard such mixed things about it and I did fear that being so close to the railway line might make it noisy, but I slept really well all three nights. Aside from being a bit small, the room was entirely adequate and to be honest, I’d rather have good wi-fi than space to dance around the room. I liked the ‘pay on check in’ system and once I got used to the extreme colour scheme, it didn’t bother me too much. I would still prefer to stay at the Courtyard which is just down the road and a similar distance from the office, but when the Courtyard isn’t available (which happens quite often) I would be happy to go back to the Prizeotel. It won’t become my first choice but it’s certainly moved up into second place. Due to the great rates we get with other hotels, the price difference isn’t as amazing as it might be for private travellers, but this matches what we pay at the Intercity Hotel on the other side of the railway line, and offers better beds, better wi-fi and more convenience.Close