T R A V E L | Where to Stay in Amsterdam: Motel One

Europaboulevard 23, 1079 PC Amsterdam, Netherlands // Website

Location: 4/5 // Value for Price: 4/5 // Cleanliness: 5/5 // Staff: 5/5

Our visit to Amsterdam a few weeks back was brief, but beautiful. During our first night we were kindly invited to experience the brand new, plush Motel One hotel, which opened a less than two months ago. Motel One is a chain hotel that originally began in Germany, but has successfully stretched itself across Europe. The Amsterdam hotel is the company's first venture into the Netherlands.

Motel One are essentially budget designer hotels meaning that you can get the comfort and quirks of a boutique hotel at an affordable price. Rooms start at just €69 per night for a single room and €84 for a double, which is on the cheaper end of the spectrum when visiting Amsterdam. 

We were a little disorganised with the planning of our trip, which meant waiting 7 hours overnight in Gatwick Airport for our 6am flight. Stupidly, we didn't sleep the afternoon before (although we did plan to, but time slipped away from us), which meant by the time we arrived in Amsterdam at 8am we were walking zombies surviving only because the constant caffeine we were drinking. We arrived at Motel One around 10am even though our check-in time wasn't until 3pm. We just planned to drop our luggage off at the hotel and then doze off in a park somewhere for a few hours until our room was ready. However, the staff were absolutely wonderful and ushered us into the lounge for some complimentary coffee and had our room ready within the hour - a whole 4 hours earlier than our specified check-in time! For that, we're forever grateful as we sunk into the bed for a well-needed 4 hour nap before headed out to explore.

The hotel is just two stops away from Schipol airport on the train, which was only around 10 minutes travel time. It's closest station is Station RAI, which is situated on the main GVB metro line. We were pleasantly surprised at just how close the hotel is to the train station as you can easily walk it in under 3 minutes or so. I mean, you can literally see the hotel as the train pulls up to the station, so you really cannot miss it! Although it's a little further out from the city centre, you can jump on the metro and within 15 minutes you're at Amsterdam Centraal station. It's a perfect distance to escape the bustle of the city centre in the evenings.Unfortunately, we didn't get much of a chance to explore the area surrounding the hotel itself, but it's directly opposite the RAI conference centre. Although we didn't get a chance to have a look for ourselves, according to the staff at the hotel there are a few restaurants and a supermarket located less than a 10 minutes away.

Our room itself was on the 9th floor, which is the highest floor of the hotel. It was really hard to photograph the room well enough to do it justice. But, when we first walked in, in our tired haze, we both gasped at the large pane windows, which emphasised the view of our favourite city. The huge window walls run across the two outside walls of the room, which let as much natural light in as possible. This wasn't a problem when we decided to take a nap as you were able to block it out with the floor-length blackout curtains. Our room also had a television, which popped on in the evening with some munch we bought from the supermarket.

The bathroom, although small, was chic, sleek and modern with black tiles and chrome touches. The shower was absolutely huge and was pretty swish for a relatively budget hotel. For a few days away, the bathroom is ideal and you couldn't ask for much more. A nice touch came in the form of USB ports in the walls meaning you could charge your phone directly without a EU plug adaptor - absolutely genius!

The real standout trait for Motel One Amsterdam is it's gorgeous, eclectic lobby and living area, which is also known as The One Lounge. Every Motel One hotel has it's own individual and unique lounge that is inspired by it's surroundings, meaning each hotel has a different running theme to the next. The Amsterdam hotel had bicycle parts decorating the walls, including creatively using the racks to hold notes and compliments from previous guests. The intentionally mismatched interior had a real home-from-home feeling, especially for someone like me! It just feels more like a communal living space rather than exclusively being a standard bar and breakfast area. It certainly makes a difference in a hotel to not feel confined to your room for general relaxing. In fact, it would be the perfect place to read a book or catch up on your work as the hotel offers free FAST wi-fi to every guest.

The staff are some of the most warm and welcoming I've ever come across and really helped make our stay special. Even the hotel sales manager herself made the effort to introduce herself and was on hand to answer any questions or recommendations about what to see or where to go in Amsterdam. Although we didn't get a chance to have a drink at the bar, we did have a nosey at the menu and everything is fairly priced with a cocktail costing around €8 or so - certainly cheaper than a cocktail in London!

I would thoroughly recommend Motel One Amsterdam to any traveller or couple on a budget as it's reasonably priced, but feels far more upmarket than your run-of-the-mill budget chain European hotel. I particularly love that each Motel One hotel has it's own character and it certainly creates a draw to visiting their other hotels. Next time we're in Amsterdam (let's face it, we're always drawn back!) or anywhere in Europe for that matter, I'll certainly be considering Motel One again.

If you want to catch up on the rest of my Amsterdam travel posts you can read more here.

*Disclaimer: We were given a complimentary stay at Motel One in exchange for an honest review.
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