General:
The Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is situated, as its name reveals, at one of the biggest and busiest European airports. In former times, back in 1972, the Hilton was used to be the “one and only” in the airport area which offered an uninterrupted view at the airport. As the years passed, Schiphol constantly grew and lately was supplemented by the WTC Plaza. Nowadays, the Hilton is located next to the Plaza, thus isn’t directly accessable through the terminal. Only an owned parking area separates it from the covered walkway of the WTC. At the same time, this means that the hotel lies lonely and quietly away from the bustling business.

Although the Hilton is in walking distance from the airport, a shuttle service is offered every 30 minutes from the main entrance. Since its building, the Hilton has been expanded and recently was completely renovated and refurnished. Also this Hilton has a reputation of satisfying the needs of business travellers, which is underlined by the total occupancy stats of 80% for business.
The ideal location and the valuable Hilton’s service make this hotel a reasonable alternative to the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport. From the Hilton, it’s only about thirty minutes to the nearest beaches (Zandvoort and Bloemendaal) which is also worth considering. As Schiphol airport has an own train station, Amsterdam is just within a stone’s throw. To quote Bill Bryson: “You step out of the front door (of Amsterdam’s central station) and there in front of you is – gosh! – every hippie that’s left in Europe.”

Philosophy:
Ms Verhoeve, Business Development Manager, informed us that a main point of Hilton’s philosophy is an attentive, non-intrusive, efficient personalized service to ensure a hassle-free stay in an atmosphere where you feel at home. The Hilton’s Honors Program rewards guests who frequently stay within the Hilton network.
Ms Verhoeve and her colleague Ms Schol, PA of the executive office, have been working at the Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol since six years and left us in astonishment when they talked about Hilton’s staff program. Staff development is very important for the Hilton group which offers a system of mentoring and coaching for a constant high-level training.

Ms Schol put it into a nutshell: “Team member delight is guest delight.” She added: “You always see a fake smile.” Truly, the staff we encountered was indeed very friendly, polite and really seemed happy, even the bar keeper when we brazenly ordered drinks only minutes before the “Stopover Bar” closed. Hilton does take care of their staff – they even give training to them in the fitness room for their physical health.
As we have visited a lot of hotels already, we daresay to always feel well treated and very comfortable in every Hilton – also because you really can feel that the staff shares your happiness. A hotel’s culture which is stable but open for development, a solid combination of luxury and comfort, happy employees as well as the personal service definitely characterise the Hilton chain.

Rooms:
The Hilton features a total of 280 rooms in basically four types. Because of the big demand of non-smoking rooms, the hotel had to dramatically narrow the number of smoking rooms. Nowadays, over 85% of all rooms are non-smoking rooms.

The 71 Executive Rooms with Club Rooms are located on the top floors and beyond that include an exclusive access to the Executive Lounge. The clearly arranged lounge offers a small breakfast, serves light snacks and beverages in the afternoon and little titbits of canapés at the end of the day. Private service provided by the staff such as quick check-in is another exclusive extra.

The rooms are held in warm, cosy colours and also offer a little relaxing chair as well as good-sized working desk. You won’t encounter cold luxury, but rooms that seem friendly and snug. One thing that struck us was the clean and fresh smell of the rooms. Hilton explained that this is due to the special air conditioning system.

All rooms come with floor-to-ceiling triple glassed windows to prevent guest from being disturbed by the busy airport but at the same time offering a great panoramic view over the dynamic runways. Needless to say, facilities such as individual air-conditioning, minibar, hair dryer, in-room entertainment system and internet access is provided apart from that. A turn-down service, two bottles of free mineral and sparkling water as well as tea and coffee making facilities are offered beyond that which we appreciated.

On Monday early morning, the “The Hague Times” in English was hanging on the doorknob. A nice touch were little, attentive presents such as typical, regional cookies and beverages. The box, however, in which the cookies were packed was covered with fingerprints, and the bottle of Rjoja mysteriously disappeared on the next day. Although I fully switched off the air-conditioning, I found myself freezing with a cold and a leaking noise in an algid room the next morning.

What I noticed as well was that even with every single device turned off, I could still clearly hear a disturbing rushing of the hotel’s ventilation system. Actually, we encountered that everywhere throughout the hotel, also from the outside. The room itself was, despite the bathroom, neat and overall clean. I’m still amazed that the house keeping always forgets to clean the dust on the picture’s frames and what accumulates under the mattress.
What made me feel a bit exploited and somehow aggrieved was the fact that the Hilton still charges exaggerated prices for internet access. It’s clear to me that from the economical point it’s more than reasonable to make profit out of big demand. However, in times when internet is at least among the business travellers considered as an ordinary good, I just can’t understand it. Its simply not correct to ask for a ridiculous fee. A free wireless computer network alone would be a reason for guests to visit the Hilton again.
Also be informed in advance of using the hotel telephone. Although well knowing that those rates are always overcharged, I made a typical call to a number of an inland mobile company from my colleague’s room for three or four minutes. I felt more than ashamed and embarrassed when I found out that my colleague had to pay over ten euros.

The bathroom was small, greyly marbled, a bit hastily plastered and was sparely illuminated by two lights. This reminded me of Ibis.

A little rose gave the room a friendly touch tough and exclusive shower amenities gave a breeze of luxury. When I entered the bathroom, I found small, little black hairs scattered everywhere (and believe me, they’re not mine), even in the bed which I found disgusting. I hereupon asked the cleaning woman to have another and more accurate look. When I returned in the night, the hairs were still there. On the next day, I daresay they changed the cleaning woman, it was clean again. Once, even the house keeping manager knocked on my door and enquired if I’m satisfied with the room. It seemed that I just picked an unlucky day.

The generous mirrors easily get steamed up and won’t clear quick enough, which is due to the fact that there’s no extra heating facility installed behind them. The drain in the bathtub was clogged and the sprinkler made a roaring, frightening sound which I think must have been noticed by an attentive house keeping. The floor was ice-cold and couldn’t been heated. A good thing was that, as outlined before, in the scope of the turn-down service, used towels were replaced by soft, new ones and also the biggest mess was sorted out.

The absolutely most remarkable feature of the Hilton room was the bed. At the first glance, it seemed stone-hard. I placed a glass full of water on the mattress and energetically lay down beside it (ok, I jumped) – the glass wouldn’t move.

Alcove Suite 619

It dawned on me that the night would be rather hard. To our surprise, it turned out that it was one of the best beds we’ve ever slept in. We once fall into them after a late meeting which lasted till the early morning, well assuming that only a few hours sleep would make the coming day pretty tough to survive. However, we had a deep, good night’s rest and when we woke up, we felt fresh and fully recovered.

The Hotel also offers eight Alcove Suites which are very spacious, attractively arranged over a corner and have a feather mattress cover on the bed. They have a cosy sitting area and a generous, marbled bathroom with a separate shower and a bathtub.

Apart from that, there is also one Junior and one Senior Suite available.

Restaurants:
The Hilton has two restaurants. The “Greenhouse” offers breakfast, lunch and dinner from the buffet or à la carte. On the menu, you’ll find light, fresh local and international dishes as well as the “Hilton favourites” which guests are always longing for, like a juicy steak. The “EastWest” restaurant serves traditional dishes mixed with aromatic herbs and spices from the Far East. The Indonesian cook offers fusion cooking and therefore combines European and Asian styles. The restaurant also has a Teppanyaki table where the chef prepares freshly grilled dishes in front of the guests. The hotel’s bar, right next to the entrance, is called “Stopover Bar” and spoils you with reasonable charged drinks and canapés till 01am and invites the guest to stay.

As we had early morning flights to Amsterdam, we checked-in when our rooms weren’t ready yet although the Hilton does it’s best to accommodate early-check ins. We immediately kindly were offered to enjoy a breakfast, which we appreciated after the unbelievable incapacitated inflight service of BMI and KLM.

We were politely welcomed and shown to a free, neat and clean table. The buffet was standard but good. I liked the tasty fruit salad with fresh pieces of pineapples.

What I noticed was that the syrup bottle was sticky and totally blurred, and still was kept ignored by the kitchen staff on the third day. Nobody can persuade me that they lost sight of that. Perhaps nobody wanted to touch and clean it. Neither wanted I. Also the other big spoons for the fruits were dirty and covered in sticky sugar water, but nobody felt responsible for it. Once, our waiter replaced a dirty by a dirty cup, but he may be forgiven.

In general, the restaurant’s team was very attentive and friendly. What I would like to point out is that they constantly filled up the whole buffet, even just before the end. Not enough, a waitress kindly informed us that they were about to close it and asked if we still would like to have something. We felt very well treaten and enjoyed the breakfast.

Meeting Room

Conference and Meeting:
By being ideally located at the airport, it’s not surprising that one of the big focus points for this hotel is the “Let’s meet” concept. The Business Centre has a secretary service which assists with all kinds of things so that people can aim at their meeting and rest assured that their needs are being taken care of. The Hilton has numerous small business rooms for an occupancy from two up to sixty people. The interior design is held in bright, friendly colours to give energy. The rooms offer state-of-the art equipment and meet the HMQ (Hilton Meetings Quality) norm for the perfection of meetings. Apart from that, some are provided with the famous eight-hours chairs which offer excellent comfort. The necessary equipment is supplied as well.

Living Well Express:
A small fitness room is available exclusively for guests 24 hours a day. The equipment is enough for an adequate workout, although I found it rather unfitting as it only offers a work-out on specific muscles and thus is inappropriate for the occasional user. The two treadmills feature good programs to choose from. The Living Well Express has a sauna, steam bath and two heavily relaxation chairs as well. There’s also a fitness coach from another company assisting you with your workout.

Overall impression:
“If you’ve seen one Hilton, you’ve seen the others as well.” That might be true, but aren’t it the recognisable things that make you feel home? Spoilt as we are, we felt well served by the very friendly staff and enjoyed our stay.

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Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol hotel Schiphol Boulevard 701, Schiphol, Netherlands 1118 BN
Tel: +31-(0)20-710 4000 Fax: +31-(0)20-710 4080

TSR rating:
Hotel: 4/5
Location: 5/5
Service: 5/5
Facilities: 3/5
Room: 4/5
Food: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

Article written by Markus Wechselberger, pictures by Markus Wechselberger and Marco 't Hart
Stay: July 2006