I really really wanted to love this hotel. I booked early in the year and was eagerly following their social media as the building progressed. I was looking forward to having a Finnish Design Hotel experience to come back to after a day in the snow. Unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to its name. They need to remove “design” from the name, as its just a regular hotel, basically a brand new budget hotel with a few interesting design features. If you book with the expectation that it is maybe a 3-star hotel you won’t be disappointed but if you book here expecting a really nice experience similar to other boutique design hotels, you will likely be very disappointed. Now for the details: The Lobby The lobby is shared with the Levi Hotel and Spa, so instead of a quiet boutique hotel lobby, it becomes a crowded and noisy area where packs of people are piling on and off tour buses throughout the day. Service at the front counter is varied, sometimes appalling, sometimes ok. Never design hotel wow or amazing. It was essentially like checking into a motel. Upon check in they give you a basic guest info sheet with some vague information, including the instruction that you need to reserve your time slot for breakfast. So I went down to reception to reserve the time slot, only to be faced with confused looks and told there’s no need...I really really wanted to love this hotel. I booked early in the year and was eagerly following their social media as the building progressed. I was looking forward to having a Finnish Design Hotel experience to come back to after a day in the snow. Unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to its name. They need to remove “design” from the name, as its just a regular hotel, basically a brand new budget hotel with a few interesting design features. If you book with the expectation that it is maybe a 3-star hotel you won’t be disappointed but if you book here expecting a really nice experience similar to other boutique design hotels, you will likely be very disappointed.

Now for the details:

The Lobby
The lobby is shared with the Levi Hotel and Spa, so instead of a quiet boutique hotel lobby, it becomes a crowded and noisy area where packs of people are piling on and off tour buses throughout the day.

Service at the front counter is varied, sometimes appalling, sometimes ok. Never design hotel wow or amazing. It was essentially like checking into a motel.

Upon check in they give you a basic guest info sheet with some vague information, including the instruction that you need to reserve your time slot for breakfast. So I went down to reception to reserve the time slot, only to be faced with confused looks and told there’s no need to book.

The room

No cupboards to hang or store clothes, they only provide an open rack with 4 (!) coathangers.

Rooms are small (we had the double, I’m sure the suites are much better)

Wifi is SO bad. Vey weak signal.

The bathroom design is weird. The bathroom door is also the shower door, so if you close the bathroom door there is no door on the shower. And with or without the shower door, the water goes under and floods the bathroom floor, and they don’t provide any bath mats! So we had to use the towels to keep our feet dry, every single day.

There is no shelf in the shower, so we had to keep the soap bottle on the floor. I mean, this is basic stuff designers.

Bathroom amenities are basic, and the toilet paper they provide is scratchy 2-ply.

There is NO PHONE in the room. So you need to walk down to reception if you need anything or have a question. For the price you are paying this seems ridiculous. Its fine in a budget hotel not to have a phone, but in a boutique hotel as they market themselves, come on.

There is no information in the room. Nothing. Just the single sheet of paper they provide at reception.

They provide tea bags, coffee pods and sugar, and yet no spoons...

There is no kettle in the room. There is a Nespresso which apparently can be used to get hot water, but they don’t provide instructions on how to use it. Its almost as if the people who set up these rooms haven’t stayed in a hotel before.

There is no room service option. The only option is to walk down to reception a buy a bag of peanuts from the reception “bar”, which is just the end of the reception desk.

The only rubbish bin in the room is a tiny little thing in the bathroom, probably a quarter the size of regular bins in most hotel rooms. They need to provide another bin in the room.

Cleaning was sporadic. Some days we were out from 10-5 and the cleaners didn’t come as I guess we missed the cleaning window.

Breakfast

Walking through to breakfast you walk past a big buffet only to be escorted into another smaller room with a different (much) smaller buffet. The breakfast is nice enough (small buffet and a small a la carte options) but there are definitely way more food options in the other buffet for the other hotel guests. So the kids had to be told that sorry, that nice stuff you saw as we are walking past, you can’t have that. The Design Hotel breakfast room is supposed to be a more private exclusive area, but this seems a strange design to have design hotel guests walk through a buffet intended for guests form the other hotel. Then once you are inside, you are just separated from the other hotel’s buffet by a curtain, its weird. I don’t know what the designers were thinking with this whole concept, but its terrible.

There were no labels on most of the food at breakfast. Over the days we were there some labels appeared, but most of it was not labelled which is just not on. You need to inform guests what the food is

The buffet table is very cramped, so the way they laid it out meant the end of the serving fork would possibly be lying across the food on the plate next to it. Not hygienic, there needs to be space between the serving plates so this doesn’t happen.

Positives:

A few of the staff were great, and were really trying to do their best to make it a nicer experience for the guests.

Toni the waiter was lovely
The tall girl at reception with long hair (sorry I didn’t catch her name, but she was very apologetic and helpful)
One of the cleaning ladies who gave us some extra supplies when we met her in the hallway. She was super friendly and helpful.

Summary - Disappointingly, upon check-out the staff didn’t take any opportunity to get feedback, or to even ask how the stay was. There were no feedback forms in the rooms also, which would have been a great idea if the management want to find out and fix teething issues fast rather than waiting for poor reviews here.

I do recognise it is a brand new hotel and that teething problems are expected, so I believe some of the above can be easily rectified. But this place is incorrectly branded and does not deliver what it promises. I really hope the owners think about not only the name, but the way they market this place (and the price). Its not a separate hotel, its not a boutique design hotel, its basically more rooms added to the Levi Spa hotel and should be marketed as such. I would not stay here again.More