Hilton Prague Reviews

Hilton Prague Hotel Review

Rate & Room Booked: King Hilton Executive (upgraded to King Junior Suite) – Winter Sale HHonors 2242.50 CZK
Stayed As: HHonors Gold | Stayed In: July 2016

The Hotel

Hilton Prague is a large (around 800 rooms) hotel located just on the outskirts of Prague’s Old Town, heading towards the business district.

The hotel is a massive, imposing glass cube which was built in the late 1980’s so is relatively modern. The hotel is centered around a large glass roofed atrium which is surrounded by the hotel rooms with the main reception, restaurants, leisure and extensive conference facilities on the lower floors. You really do get the feeling of scale when walking around the place, it is a massive building and operation.

There is also a casino on the lower floor of the hotel which is a reasonable size with a few tables and slots. It was a little smoky and dingy, but nothing out of the ordinary for a casino..! The casino appeared to be operated by a third party company as you could not charge any drinks ordered to your room at the casino bar.

Location

The hotel is located just off Prague’s Vltava river heading towards the city’s business district.

After arriving into Prague on a late flight we stayed the night at the airport and got an Uber Black from our airport hotel to the Hilton which cost around 600 CZK the following day. We were impressive with the Uber Black service in Prague (nice cars, friendly drivers) and used it often to get around town and back to the airport. Watch out for Uber Pop however, which is cheaper than Uber Black but uses unlicensed drivers, so the quality of the car and driver can vary massively.

It is an easy enough 25 minute walk along the river from the hotel to Prague’s main tourist areas such as Old Town Square and Charles Bridge. There is a shorter walking route cutting through the shopping centre to the side of the hotel which takes around 5 minutes off the walk into the old town. We also took a walk up to the castle from the hotel which took around 40 minutes which wasn’t too taxing… until the fairly steep steps on the way up to castle, which were a challenge on a very hot and muggy day summer’s day.

Prague also has an extensive tram network with almost everywhere we visited having a tram line or stop, the nearest stop to the hotel being around 5 minutes walk. Public transport is pretty cheap and flexible in Prague, you can pickup tickets in local shops.

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Checkin

The main reception area is located just off of the hotels atrium. There is also a dedicated Viking Cruises tour group reception on the lower ground floor so they must do a lot of business with the hotel!

A few weeks prior to our stay I received an email from the executive floor reception inviting us to checkin on the private 8th floor executive checkin area, so on arriving we headed straight up to floor 8. Anyone who has booked or has been pre upgraded to an executive room or above can use the 8th floor checkin area. I assume HHonors Diamonds can too but I’m unsure on that. You are seated at a desk whilst being checked in with hardly anyone around, so a much nicer experience than dealing with the busy crowded reception downstairs.

We were greeted by one of the duty managers who checked us in promptly and was very welcoming, giving us information about the hotel, the executive lounge, as well as a tourist map of the city.  I had emailed the hotel ahead of time asking if we could have an early checkin as we had to checkout of our airport hotel at 12. Despite me asking for 1pm they actually had our room ready for 12! We were proactively offered late checkout which was appreciated but we didn’t need it on this occasion due to flight times.

I noticed the duty managed checking us in was also the hotels HHonors champion which I’ve not heard of before, he certainly knew the HHonors benefits inside out. He noted it was our birthdays and gave us a couple of drinks vouchers for Cloud9 bar (on the top floor of the hotel) as a gift.

One thing to note… both times I’ve stayed here online checkin using my HHonors account has not been available, so I don’t think it has been activated for this hotel as yet.

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Room

We had been pre upgraded to a King Junior Suite from our originally booked King Executive Room. Our junior suite was on one of the corners of the 6th floor. The room wasn’t too far from the main bank of lifts, there is also a second set of lifts which go up to Cloud 9 bar (marked also as garage access” on the ninth floor which could also be used, and were much quicker to call as less people used them.

The Junior Suite was a nice room, I like being on the corner of the building as you get a much better all around view. The Junior Suite had a small entrance hall with space for a luggage rack and not much else, a small bathroom, a reasonably sized bedroom and a separate lounge area. The lounge area was a good size but felt under furnished. The tea/coffee making facilities (including a Nespresso style pod coffee machine) as well as the mini bar were in the lounge. There was also a good sized desk in the lounge on which there was a space and cables hanging out for a tv which seemed to have been removed. Overall I think the lounge was a nice space to have, but could be made much more useful (for me at least) with a TV/music system. We ended up just using it for storing cases and not much else really. There was a sliding door which opened up into the bedroom in which there was a good sized king bed, another desk, some wardrobe space and a TV. The TV had a great selection of English speaking channels which you could browse by language which was a neat feature.

There were plenty of sockets all around the room, although some of these seemed to be on the lighting wiring ring so a few of the light switches would control power to some of the sockets... Not ideal when you accidentally switch your phone charger off trying to switch the light off at night;) The room felt very clean and was maintained to a reasonable standard. Noise also wasn’t a problem despite the room looking onto a main motorway, also didn’t hear any noise from other rooms.

On the first day we were delivered Czech style cakes as a welcome gift, they were seriously tasty! On the second day a lovely birthday cake was also delivery which is always a nice touch.

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Bathroom

The bathroom was pretty small, given the overall size of the junior suite. Everything felt crammed in and there wasn’t much space for toilet bags and toiletries next to the sink.

They was a good range of Hilton Peter Thomas Roth toiletries (probably the largest range I’ve seen, with tooth brushes and tampons!), the shower gel, shampoo etc. being the larger sized ones.

The shower was an over the bath job which work well with good pressure. Shower screen was pretty small though, so it was hard to not flood the place when showering. It also got very steamy due to the size of the room, however the mirror was heated so wasn’t a big problem.

The bathroom does have a built in speaker in the roof which didn’t work, I assume because the absent TV in the lounge would normally run it.

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Breakfast

We had the option of having breakfast either in the executive lounge, or in the atrium restaurant on the ground floor as gold card holders.

On the first morning we were in a rush to get into town to catch a boat trip, so we went to the lounge to grab something quickly. The executive lounge was quiet when we arrived, we asked if we would like tea of coffee on sitting down. They had a decent selection of food out with a few hot items (sausage, bacon, scrambled egg) as well as the usual continental options with cold cuts, pastries etc. The food was all good quality and the cooked items were kept hot.

On the other mornings of our stay we went down to the Atrium Restaurant for breakfast. Like much of the hotel, it is massive with an unbelievable amount of staff running the place. We were seated and asked if if we wanted tea or coffee which were brought over to our table promptly. The buffet area was huge, with an excellent choice of hot options, cold cuts, salad, pancakes, breads… everything you could possibly want at that time in the morning and then some! There was also two omelette stations for freshly cooked omelettes. The Atrium restaurant was very busy both mornings we visited it, and felt fairly chaotic and noisy as a results with lots of families. If you want a more peaceful breakfast, and don’t mind the more limited choice I would recommend the Executive Lounge.

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Bars & Restaurants

We visited the hotel’s Cloud 9 bar a couple of times which is on the top floor (floor 9 unsurprisingly). Cloud 9 is by far the best bar I’ve seen in any Hilton hotel. It runs the full length of one of the hotels sides, with two outdoor terraces at either end of it. It was amazing place with great cocktails, music, atmosphere and stunning views of the city and the river. You get a box of popcorn to nibble on when choosing your cocktails, which are all reasonably priced. I had a pork shoulder wrap from the food menu one night which was also very tasty and again reasonably priced. The outdoor roof terrace was a great place to spend a few hours sipping on a tasty cocktails with comfy sofas, cool looking gas heaters and nicely done subtle lighting.

There are a couple of restaurants and a bar/cafe on the ground floor of the hotel which we didn’t get a chance to try. For some reason the atrium bar is marginally more expensive than Cloud 9 for cocktails… I know where I would rather be! You can view the menus on the hotel’s website: www.hilton.com

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Parking

We didn’t have a car, so can’t comment on the parking directly.

There was a small number of spaces outside the front door, I think the main car park is in the basement of the hotel. The Hilton website advises 750 CZK (around £22) per night for self parking.

HHonors Benefits

HHonors benefits offered for HHonors Gold card holders:

• A choice of either 1,000 bonus points, or a free continental breakfast. I have this set to free breakfast on my account which we were offered either in the executive lounge, or in the Atrium Restaurant on the ground floor. We were given a full breakfast in the Restaurant, rather than just continental
• We were granted a 1 category room upgrade from King Executive room to King Junior Suite
• We were proactively offered late checkout during checkin
• Free WiFi
• 2 x bottles of water were in the room and were replenished daily

Hilton Prague Executive Lounge

The Hilton Prague Executive Lounge is located on the 8th floor of the hotel, just down the hall from the executive reception area. In between the reception area and lounge there is also a number of meeting rooms which you can use as an executive level guest.

The lounge is split into two areas, a large main seating area which has buffet area and windows out into the atrium as well as a separate seating area across a hallway which I believe used to be the smoking area. There is no key card entry you just walk in and will be asked at some stage for your room number. There were a lot of staff around who were friendly, attentive and kept the buffet area well stocked.

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Hilton Prague Executive Lounge Opening Times

Note these times were correct at time of this visit, but may change in the future.

• Breakfast: 7am-11am
• Afternoon Tea: 3pm-5pm
• Hot & Cold Snacks: 6pm-8pm
• Beer & Wine: 6pm-10.30pm
• Spirits 6pm-8.30pm (Mon to Fri) 6pm-8pm (Sat & Sun)

As mentioned above the breakfast offering in the lounge was pretty good. We also managed to catch afternoon tea service one day on which there was a good selection of sandwiches, cakes and pastries. In the evenings, the selection alcoholic drinks was very good with a number of red & white wines to choose from, fizz and a number of spirits including gin, vodka, whisky port, and a few other spirits. Whilst the spirits selection was there, these also seem to have been cut back in terms of offering and the amount of time they are available since Damian’s blog post in 2011. The food selection in the evening was just ok, it included cold cuts, some salad, nuts/crisps (including really tasty wasabi crips!). The hot options were deep fried cauliflower with cheese (apparently, I couldn’t taste any cheese) and salmon quiche.

Overall Hilton Prague’s Executive Lounge is definitely up there as one of the better lounges I’ve been in. It’s a nice place to spend a couple of hours in the evening, and really handy place to drop in for a quick bite to eat during the day. It’s hard to say if it was the best I’ve been to, I certainly didn’t feel majorly wowed by but it was still very good… I think I might have missed it at its best!

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Hilton Prague Hotel Images

Hilton Prague Contact Information

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