I have an interesting hotel to add to the blog once again! I’m not very well-versed in writing hotel reviews yet, so please leave a comment if there are any aspects of the hotel you’d like more pictures or details of! I also took a video of the room when I arrived, but didn’t get any good stills off it; I’m definitely still learning the hotel review game.
Berlin has several Marriott hotels that cover all the possible tiers of hotels, including a Moxy (which I stayed at last time), a Ritz-Carlton, and this JW Marriott.
Location
This hotel is located near 2 U-Bahn stations (Potsdamer Platz and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park). Potsdamer Platz is a major shopping area, but I found it most convenient, in general, actually to get Ubers around the city since they’re pretty reasonably priced. I didn’t find the exterior of the hotel particularly exciting, but in the future I’ll still get a picture of it.
Check-in
The hotel is not located particularly close to any stations that allow easy access to the airport, so I arrived by Uber from an S-Bahn station. The lobby of the hotel is very nicely appointed but does have relatively low ceilings.
Check-in took longer than expected, despite appropriate staffing levels, because all the people ahead of me had a lot of things to say/do. The staff were all very friendly in a very German way, which is all you can expect.
Lobby/common areas
When you walk in, you’re hit immediately by all the marble, gold, crystal used in the design, and it’s intense.
I noticed that the hotel is owned by a Qatari tourism group, and that style shows through in the architectural accent choices.
The room
I used two suite night awards (SNA) to upgrade from a standard room to a one-bedroom suite for my stay. It was a great use of an SNA in my opinion!
The main room consisted of a sitting area with couches and a small table.
The bedroom had nice corner windows and a typical European style king bed that was the result of squishing two twin beds together.
Proof that I’m particularly amateur when it comes to hotel reviews is that I apparently didn’t get a good picture of the bathroom…
The club
As a result of my Marriott Titanium membership, I had access to the hotel’s club room. This was my first stay at a JW Marriott and one of my first times in a hotel lounge, so I don’t have a good point of comparison. The room seemed a bit small for the size of the hotel, but food selection seemed decent to me.
The food was pretty standard buffet food and was enough for a decently-sized dinner. There was a bartender just outside the room during the evening meal time, and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks were available.
Breakfast
The surprise highlight of this hotel for me was the breakfast. Breakfast was amazing, and it was included with my room. I had to take a lot of pictures in order to get all the different parts of the buffet covered. It was absolutely huge.
Other amenities
The hotel has a small fitness center, and a pool with sauna and steam rooms. I didn’t actually end up using any of them because I didn’t have much downtime on the trip. But I recognize I should’ve for the purpose of completing this review. I’ll keep it in mind for next time.
In summary, I think this hotel was worth the very mild splurge for it. The Marriott situation in Berlin was a bit odd when I was trying to book a hotel. In June, both the Moxy (where I stayed in 2022) and the Courtyard Marriott were much more expensive than the JW Marriott despite being much lower end hotels. This hotel never seemed particularly busy, so I assume that’s why it was cheaper and had good rates with points.
I booked this hotel as two separate reservations. Marriott allows you to mix and match cash and points rates when you have a multi-night stay, but you can’t mix a Free Night Award and cash for some reason. Luckily since both Suite Night Awards came through, it wasn’t a problem keeping my same room for the entire time.
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