We only stayed here one night on a trip through Switzerland. Compared with other hotels in Italy, Germany and Luxenbourg it was expensive but it was clean. The room was very plain but for the one night this did not bother us. Position is close to the main road through Interlaken. Breakfast was ordinary but acceptable.
Good small hotel right next to the station and 10 minutes away from the city center. Room was clean and quiet, breakfast buffet good with fresh products
We stayed for 6 days in the hotel. We had made Interlaken as our base for part of our 15 day travel to Switzerland. It was a convenient hotel for us to travel for the 6 days...very close to the station. We had a very warm welcome from the person (male) at the reception...very friendly but has some weird rules which he shared with us for the first 10 mins. Cannot say it is wrong to have rules since I am sure he had an experience which got him to state the rules...but found them a bit weird and can laugh it off now. The place is well recommended for its accessibility. We were not too keen to be at Interlaken Ost due to the noise and crowds...so this suited just fine. The room was big and nice but definitely could do a bit of refurbishing. The shower was another story altogether...since we never could use it for all of the 6 days...not that we were not having a bath but the shower never worked though we kept complaining repeatedly...how we managed is yet another funny story...I managed to get a plastic box from the kitchen and used it to wash ourselves!!! It is one of those hotels where you should not expect too much. We were hardly in the room so we did not really get affected by the non functional light bulbs or the noise of the busload of travellers who would check in at 12 midnight and checkout at 5 am...or the terrible smell of the dinner which reached our room on the 2nd floor. Or was it that since this affected us so much that we just came to crash...which I may say was good since we explored more of Switzerland...so maybe I should thank them. They have a free internet service at the reception which is very convenient. All said and done the staff is very helpful and are ever running around since they are understaffed. It has only Asian travellers and the page with the rules discriminates one country clearly...which is not very good. The breakfast is nothing great...and options are not many. It seems the REAL OWNER has sublet this place to some one else for the upkeep and management. Would recommend this place to people who would want to spend less on stay and more on travel...but definitely carry a small jug to take a bath.
the rooms arent bad but do need to be updated and the showers..thats another story the showers are quite frankly awful and need to be replaced ASAP. as for the food i was uterly disgusted with the stardards at this hotel i thought that a 3* hotel would atleast COOK there food properly but i was mistaken the 1st night we got the me and my class mates were served chips that were STILL FROZEN and the chicken thing (only way to describe it) was frozen at one end and just bout warm at the other. a few nights later we had something i can inly describe as some sort of buger thing that had hair on it a thick layer or fatty grease and also still had some plastic on it. even for a 38 hotel i would expect there to be atleast better food than frozen food with hair on it.if health and safety had been there they would ohave had a field day and probably more than likely shut the place down.
We booked a superior room with balcony with a local travel agency but was given a room without balcony upon check in. Had to explain to reception and was told that the agency did not specify balcony in the booking but our agency told us all superior rooms had balcony attached. Not sure who is right. Anyway reception rectified and gave us the opposite room with balcony. Were really thankful as it's the only "highlight" throughout our stay in Crystal.
The hotel is really really old and in desperate need for renovation. Everything in it is old except for the common toilet on the 1st floor which had a brand new modern design. Really irony to have this toilet in the hotel as everywhere else is so grossly old. The furnitures, fixtures, lightings etc in room, corridor and lobby really need to be changed.
Worst experience we had in our trip when we waited for the extremely slow lift and a woman (I think italian) was arranging lots of luggages to be loaded in the lift and refused to let us use the lift! We were hotel guests and she was extremely rude and told us to wait till she finish loading all the luggages (will take around 10 trips as the small lift can only take 2 luggage at a time!). We talked nicely to her to let us go up first but she was so rude and then she said she don't understand English and told us to speak to the reception. Reception didn't help us either and told us to wait! What service is this? In the end we decided we will not give in and will insist to get into the lift but this time she just kept quiet and did not say anything when we press the lift to go up.
I thought this rude woman was from agency and not working at Crystal that's why she was so rude. But to my horror I saw her working in the restaurant in Crystal! They should get ride of her asap!
The hotel location is near Interlaken West Station but not really accessible as all the shops are at the other end of the street, when you walk back to the hotel at night it's pretty quiet and there's no one on the streets near Crystal. I would really not recommend this hotel to anyone.
