I Was Going To Complain About My Free 5-Star Hotel - Then I Found Out It's Only $400 A Night
The hotel is on Promenade Platz. There are statues of famous Bavarians outside.
To get to the hotel, you have to cross the Promenade. A helpful sign warns you to "Achtung Tram." And you had really better achtung.
Because those babies barrel along silently, out of nowhere.
The statue of a famous Bavarian just in front of the hotel has an odd feature...
It has become a shrine to Michael Jackson. I was here last year, and I figured that the "Michael Jackson shrine" thing would just be temporary. But it's still here!
Walk across the Promenade and 'achtung tram' again, and then you reach the entrance of the Bayerischer Hof.
It's a "5-sterne" hotel, according to the brochure, and those heat lamps will warm you right up.)
Just start talking, and the staff will respond in whatever language you speak. They won't make you feel like an idiot American who only speaks one language.
There are complimentary dog bowls in the lobby, by the way, in case you brought your pooch.
Classic touches on the elevators...
And a heavy brass key with a remote control on the end. Press that red button, and you're in.
The DLD folks were putting me up, so I wasn't worried about the bill. And that was nice. Because Business Insider doesn't spring for 5-sterne hotels.
I used to stay at 5-sterne hotels a lot, back when I was an investment banker. So I got pretty particular about them. The Bayerischer kind-of sort-of held its own.
My room faced the courtyard. Not a bad thing to look at.
Soft, fluffy bedding--top-notch.
Welcome fruit.
Art.
A full walkthrough wardrobe area.
And the standard marble bathroom.
The bathroom, by the way, contains one of the best features of the Bayerischer Hof room experience: The shower.
Some hotels have lousy water pressure. Not the Bayerischer Hof. It's like a waterfall.
And there's a TOWEL WARMER. Water flows through those pipes and warms your towels 24/7. I felt guilty about having water warming my towels 24/7. So I turned it off.
The shampoo and toiletries are high quality. I do have an aside about the Bayerischer shampoo, however. The scent is "lemon grass." And the only other time in my life I have encountered lemon grass is in Thai soups. So washing my hair smelled like dumping a bowl of Thai soup over my head.
Soap and a "duschschaube." I guessed (correctly) that that was a shower cap.
Okay, time for the quibbles. And bear in mind that, as I was noticing these things, I was imagining that the Bayerischer Hof cost ~$700 a night--the going rate for a 5-star hotel in New York. At ~$700 a night, you can be seriously particular. So it seemed to me that it was time for the BH to re-polish their floors.
And replace the rug, which was heavily worn.
The bathroom had a strange aroma coming from it. Mold, perhaps. Whatever it was, it was strong enough that I opened a window.
The befuddling light switches weren't the Bayerischer Hof's fault--I assume they're a German thing--but there wasn't much discernible rhyme or reason to them.
Press one, and all the lights would go off. Press another and nothing would happen. Press the third and some lights would come on. Press another one somewhere else and a couple of outlets would go off. I never did figure them out.
And here is something I would have found really irritating (if I had been paying for the room). The Bayerischer Hof is a 5-sterne hotel. It costs gazillions of dollars a night. So they're really going to nickel and dime me for some wasser?
And not just nickel and dime me. That bottle of water was about $12!
I didn't even want to know how much the stuff in the mini-bar cost.
And it didn't seem like a particularly great selection.
All in, though, I loved my stay in the Bayerischer Hof (especially because it was complimentary). And I was a lot more forgiving of the worn floorboards, nickel-and-diming, and strange aroma when I checked on TripAdvisor and found that the BH is "only" $400 a night.
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