Sure Hotel by Best Western Ratingen

Needed a place to stay within walking distance of where my business is. I’m American with no experience with the Germans language. Arrived late on a Sunday evening and got in no problem. If you’re used to super big American hotel rooms, this isn’t it. If you’re like me and need a place to rest that’s close to everything, then this is the spot. Also had a refrigerator which was super nice.

The location of the hotel is 5 minutes walkway from the city center of Ratingen. Very convenient for shopping, explore the city of Ratingen or for a nice dinner in one of the restaurants in the city center. There is also a subway station in the city center which connects you to the city of Duesseldorf, the next big city close to Ratingen. The staff of the hotel is … absent. There is almost no staff you can contact. When you arrive at the hotel, you need to ring a bell and talk to someone outside of the hotel. They will give you a code which provides you a key for the doors of the hotel and your room. Never forget this key or you are in trouble. This will also be indicated by the hotel staff. Our room was not very big. As we got notice from other guests, their rooms were even smaller. No air condition. Small shower. The coming days were just a mess. The cleaning staff never changes the bed covers, never changed the towels, even we throw them on the floor to indicate to change them. Even the carpet during our stay was never cleaned or vacuumed. Lousy service. The breakfast was also a total disaster. Just some counted cold cut, some cheese, no fresh fruit, some old bagels, not fresh and not delicious. We complained already to the hotel staff in the morning, because in the afternoon, there is nobody in the hotel anymore. If you need additional toilet paper or something, they put kind of a trolley in the first floor, where you can pick up these things by yourself. No help, no staff, nothing. After 4 days we send a complain email to the management of the hotel. Suddenly they exchange the towels, bed cover and vacuum the floor. Excuse was, that they didn’t find enough staff to do this kind of work. Unacceptable. The price for the hotel, so far we have been told, is normally about 70 Euro, which is from our point of view already to expensive for such a service. At the time we stayed there, there was an exhibition in a town about 1 hour drive away and the price of the rooms including breakfast was about 200 Euro. This is a total rip-off of guests. Unreasonable and not acceptable. All in all we cannot recommend to stay in this hotel. Beside the one and only advantage of the close distance to the city center, the hotel is a total disaster and not worth the money for such kind of service. Stay away from this hotel is our recommendation. We will never ever go there again. One of the worst hotel experiences in our life.