Rotterdam Homestays

Visited for North Sea Jazz festival in July 2022. Hotel is of a high standard throughout. Our room was a standard ”water view” double, and not that big but had all we needed in terms of furnishings and amenities. One tiny gripe of mine, the bathroom has a sliding frosted-glass door, which of course saves space, but doesn't fully close. Bed and bedding all very comfortable. Shower and Air-con easy to regulate. Plenty of lifts (elevators) at all times. Breakfast superb. All staff very friendly and efficient.

We stayed at The James for 5 nights in the middle of July. It's a nice hotel - centrally located that' s walking distance to the train station, restaurants and attractions. The room we stayed in was a good size and nicely appointed. As part of the package we had use of 2 bikes for a full day. We took the bikes out on July 19 for a ride around Kinderdijk, which was about 20km away by waterbus. One of the bikes felt sluggish from the start but we attributed the problem to underinflated tires. Unfortunately, that wasn't the issue. It was making a loud pinging noise when it was put in reverse as in backing out of a bike rack on the ferry. The pedals were freewheeling as soon as we started riding when we came off the ferry. I emailed the hotel about the issue immediately but didn't hear anything back for over half an hour. A local pointed us to a bike shop 2 km away and off we went. This was the hottest day (39 C) the Netherlands had experienced in over a decade and we had almost 60 km to cover, so we wanted an earlier start. By the time the hotel emailed us back we were already at the bike shop getting it fixed. There's simply no way that we'd wait another hour or 2 for the hotel to send help. The mechanic was so disappointed with the bike's condition that he said the hotel should pay for the repair and that they may call him if they had any questions. The front desk told us their bike supplier would likely pay us back for the repair but 3 weeks later we're still waiting. The point is: I took the bike from the hotel, not their supplier. Any reasonable hotel would compensate their customers and deal with their supplier on their own. I'm not going to get too upset losing 35 euros but this shows how terrible customer service is with this hotel. You may stay there and it should be OK as long as nothing goes wrong.

Great stay - my first time staying in a hostel and I really enjoyed the experience. Everything is very modern and convenient. The location is great and walking distance from lots of tourist attractions and yummy food spots. The hostel is situated in a very vibrant community area, so it can get quite noisy but once you’re inside your hub you don’t hear anything! The hubs themselves are cute and the bed is super spacious - you get the option of a bottom or top hub, I recommend a top hub if you want to feel slightly more comfortable. The hubs have Bluetooth speakers, an app to control lighting and to speak to the host for any issues. My hub was clean but not as clean as I thought it would be, there were some marks on the side, random hairs and the air-con vent was very very dusty. Apart from that, everything else was perfect. You have a wristband that allows you to charge things to your hub, lock up your belongings and open your hub door which I thought was very handy! I really enjoyed my stay and it was a great first hostel experience, would definitely stay with CityHub again as it was a bargain!