Three nights booked, not a single one slept
In October my partner and I booked three nights at Hotel Kraft in Munich through Booking.com for a short city break. We never spent a single night there. A few hours after check-in we were walking through the rain with our luggage, looking for another hotel, while I was sick with a fever.
Here is what happened, in order. I took photos and a video on the spot, and they are at the end of this post.
A fair start: free luggage storage and an early check-in offer
We arrived around 11:00 and asked to leave a suitcase and two backpacks until check-in. The older gentleman at reception agreed straight away, at no cost. He said the room should be ready around 13:00, an hour before the official 14:00 check-in. I want to be fair about this: he was genuinely kind.
The hotel’s website describes the location as central but quiet. Central, yes: the main station is close and the old town is about a 15-minute walk away. The streets around it feel a bit rough, though not dangerous, and the nearest U-Bahn is not right outside. A large building site sits across the street. For the price, none of that would have been a problem.
A room directly under a construction site
We came back at 16:30 and were given a room on the 5th floor, the highest floor guests can use. The warning signs started in the lift: its floor was covered with protective plastic sheeting taped down at the edges, like on a building site. On the 5th floor, part of the stairwell wall was bare plasterboard.
The room was spacious but cold. From the moment we walked in, we heard construction directly above us. Not distant hammering, but angle grinders cutting and heavy equipment being dropped on the floor overhead, loud enough that it felt like it could come through the ceiling. Outside our window, scaffolding ran up the upper part of the building.
I later found out why. The hotel’s own website explains that it is adding two new floors, the 6th and 7th, plus a technical level above them, with work that began in November 2025. A notice dated 15 September 2026 says the remaining work on floors 6 and 7 is about “the last details”, and that the lift only goes up to the 5th floor. In other words, guests are being placed directly beneath an active building site. Nobody mentioned any of this to us when we booked or when we arrived. And what we heard was not “last details”. It was cutting.
I went down to reception. The older gentleman apologised and said the work would not last more than an hour. I was ill, with a cold and a fever, and needed to rest, so I called Booking.com. They contacted the hotel and called me back: the work would stop within 30 minutes, and because it was the weekend, the workers would not return until Monday.
Monday was our check-out day. Check-in starts at 14:00, so a guest arriving on time would have had two to three hours of angle grinding over their bed. And on Monday morning the workers would presumably start again well before the 11:00 check-out.
No heating on a 13°C October day
It was 13°C and raining outside, and the room was cold. I called reception to ask how to turn on the heating. A younger receptionist answered in a curt tone and told me to go and switch it on “next to” the thermostat. That made no sense.
Here is what we found:
- The air-conditioning unit above the door had a wall panel showing OFF, with no way for a guest to switch it on. It is clearly controlled centrally.
- The bedroom radiator valve was set to 0. I turned it to 5. Nothing happened, and the radiator stayed cold.
- Next to that radiator, a cable came out of the wall with its end wrapped in electrical tape.
- The bathroom radiator was set to 3–4 and was cold as well.
I called again and asked someone to come up. The receptionist looked at the radiator, put his ear to it, and went downstairs to speak to whoever handles maintenance. My impression was that the heating had simply not been switched on for the season yet.
Take a free beer, or take your bags
About ten minutes later he called our room with two options:
- Accept that the temperature in the room was decent and stay. In return, the hotel would give us a free beer each and a free breakfast the next morning.
- Leave, and the hotel would cancel the booking without charging us.
The way it was put made us feel like we were the problem. Either agree that a cold room under a building site is fine, or leave and be grateful we were not charged for it. There was no offer of another room, a portable heater or a discount.
We chose to leave. On the way out, we were told, in a dismissive tone, “good luck finding something better”.
So we went back out into the rain with our luggage to look for another hotel. I had a fever, and we had been travelling and walking around the city since early that morning.
What it cost us
Hotel Kraft cost us a day of our city break and almost €200 extra, and nobody is reimbursing that.
- Same-day prices were higher, so the replacement hotel cost us almost €200 more than our original booking.
- We lost the rest of our first day dealing with the hotel and searching for a room in the rain.
- The refund for Hotel Kraft came through after Booking.com stepped in. Apart from a brief “sorry” about the noise, the hotel never apologised.
How to avoid this, and what to do if it happens
If you are considering Hotel Kraft, check whether the construction is finished before you book. For any hotel, these habits would have saved us a lot:
- Read the hotel’s own website, not just the booking listing. Hotel Kraft’s homepage describes the construction in detail.
- Sort reviews by newest first. Problems like building work show up there long before they move the overall score.
- At check-in, ask whether there is any work going on above or next to your room. If there is, ask for another floor.
- Document everything straight away: photos, video, times and who you spoke to.
- Call your booking platform while you are still at the property. In our case, that call is what got the booking cancelled without a charge.
- Keep every receipt for a replacement hotel, in case you can claim the difference later.
Photos and video
All photos and the video below were taken by me at the hotel on 9 October 2026.
