Our Members Say
My friend and I stayed at Hotel Turist for 4 nights during our visit to Bratislava to celebrate New Year 2009.
We booked our stay through www.hostelbookers.com and paid 52 Euros (50 GBP at that time) per night for a twin room with en-suite facilities. Prices were higher than usual with it being New Year, and we had to do quite a lot of searching before we found anywhere remotely central in this price range.
We were unsure which currency we would be required to pay with as Slovakia was still using the Slovak Crown when we checked in on 29th December 2008, but had adopted the Euro by the time we checked out on 2nd January 2009! In the event, this didn’t cause us any problems and I can’t even remember now which currency we paid with.
Location
Hotel Turist is located in the Ružinov area of Bratislava, a borough to the east of the old town.
It is not particularly central, and reaching the centre of the old town took a good 45 minutes on foot, and we were walking pretty fast! Similarly, the central railway station was at least 30 minutes walk away. With this in mind, I think the hotel’s official line that “It is located only 1.5 km from historical center, 1.2 km from main railway and bus station” is a bit of an exaggeration!
The hotel is located close to various sporting venues, including the football stadiums of both Inter and Slovan Bratislava and the Ondrej Nepela hockey stadium.
There are bus and tram stops near the hotel, but we never investigated which numbers would get us to the city centre, as we preferred to walk. On the one occasion, late on a cold night, when the thought of a 45 minute walk back from town filled us with dread, we jumped in a taxi and paid just a few Euros for the 5-10 minute journey.
Bedroom
Our twin room was fairly basic, but it contained everything we needed; a couple of beds, a wardrobe, cupboards, a small table, two chairs and a TV set with a few international channels.
I’d describe the room as “functional” rather than “comfortable”, but we had no complaints. The most important thing, given that we were staying in the middle of winter, was the fact that the room was very well heated.
The room had a small balcony, but the view of drab, grey apartment blocks wasn’t particularly inspiring and I doubt I‘d have wanted to sit out there even in the warmer summer months.
The en-suite bathroom contained a shower, a washbasin and a toilet. I’ll be perfectly honest, writing this review 6 months after our stay, I couldn’t even remember what the bathroom looked like without consulting my photos. Again, it was functional more than anything else – neither memorably good nor memorably bad. We received clean towels, and possibly complimentary soap.
A basic tourist-class hotel, with functional rooms. An ok option if you can’t find anywhere more central and you’re travelling on a budget. I’d look to stay somewhere closer to the old town next time I visited Bratislava.
275 members live in Bratislava