St. Jakob Gartenbad

Lovely hotel with great services.

No working AC in August, and terrible customer service! We specifically booked a hotel with air conditioning because we knew it could be hot in Basel in August, but the AC unit never cooled our room at all during our 3-night stay. The only time the temperature on the thermostat ever dropped was when we opened the windows in the evening, but we could not leave them open because of noise from the train station and nearby streets. When we alerted the desk clerk to the issue, he assured us they would have maintenance address it, but the issue was never resolved. What made things worse was the attitude of management when we raised the issue again and requested an adjustment to our bill. The manager insisted that the AC was working as designed (despite the fact that it never cooled our room), and that the problem was with our expectations and lack of understanding of European AC systems. This approach (and the extremely nominal discount offered) was insulting and false. We’ve stayed in numerous European and Swiss hotels, and never encountered a situation where the AC did not cool the room. We were not asking for rapid cooling, or a frigid room temperature; we just wanted the ability to cool the room down at night, even by a degree or two, to make it more comfortable. The lack of functional AC was disappointing; management’s “blame the customer” approach made the whole experience infinitely worse. We will not stay at this property again.

The hotel was recently renovated so everything was new. I got an upgrade which was lovely with view over river. The staff were very helpful