Lynsey Marshall

Review of Hilton Hotel Kalastajatorppa

Worst hotel I ve stayed at in a very long time.

Worst hotel I ve stayed at in a very long time.
It is around half an hour by tram from the city with literally no restaurants round about. We purposefully booked it to be in nature and enjoy the facilities. Ha! Basically, to use the facilities (pool, sauna) you have to either skip breakfast or dinner. Despite it advertising these facilities, what they don t tell you is it s only open 7-10am or 6-10pm only. This is for cooling and cleaning purposes. I did get up one morning at 7am to swim and very quickly regretted it. While the pool itself was warm enough (just), the area around the pool was not heated at all and was freezing. Not at all a pleasant experience.
We went to use the sauna but it is only single sex saunas so we couldn t use together. If we wanted to have a sauna and conversation, well that would be EUR 60 per hour for the privilege. The women s sauna on said morning I went to the pool had a bunch of children in there so no relaxation for me!
Next and more sensitively, we arrived home one evening (around 9pm), turned the corner to the hotel and saw many police cars, armed guards etc. My heart raced and I said to my partner oh God, what s happened . Nothing as it turns out, just a special visitor or two. Yet the hotel didn t think they needed to give anyone a courtesy note or say to guests not to worry. We went for a walk the following morning and on our return were quizzed by a (friendly and polite) armed officer if we were staying at the hotel. There were even special officers on our floor so it just felt very uneasy. Sorry- but we are from the UK. When we see this many police in one place it usually means there has been another terrorist attack.
I left this hotel after 4 days in one of the most chilled countries in the world more stressed than I arrived.
I d also add that the room was very dated, unclean in places and so we ensured we were out of the hotel as much as possible.
The only nice thing about this place? The breakfast- staff were lovely and the food was nice enough.