Aspria Berlin Ku’damm

Absolutely overpriced gym. Dirty locker rooms/showers with lots of hair and garbage on the floor. Unwashed for weeks mirrors at the gyms, unfriendly and arrogant staff at the reception, confusions in the schedule. Even 2 years ago it was better. It's getting worse and dirtier, unfortunately. For half a year there was a bucket in the middle of the gym for water dripping from the roof. At the same time water tubes doesn’t work well so for drinking you should almost lick the metal parts. Most of the visitors of the gym are 60+ age during the day.

I’m commenting on the gym, not the hotel (you cannot leave reviews separately, which is a bit odd). While the gym has a pool and a fairly comprehensive course programme, what is really annoying for the steep price level is that the communication of the membership team is truly terrible. Classes get cancelled without any notifications being sent to people who had explicitly registered (I had other members also showing up with me, also checking their emails again and again, but none of us had received anything), which not just happened for me personally but also when swimming classes for my daughter got cancelled. No call, no email, you just show up and wonder what happened. They then don’t proactively offer a repeat class (for my daughter’s swimming lessons, which I paid for separately!) but seem to assume that you don’t mind them delivering one class less than what you had paid for. Emails generally only receive a reply if you send a few reminders and get lucky. It would be a great place to work out at (I particularly appreciate that it has parking for members), but the service level is simply entirely unacceptable for the price level. I’ll not renew my membership after my current annual contract is over.

I ended up really enjoying my stay here thanks to the excellent facilities. I got off on the wrong foot with this hotel because of the sauna concept of the rooms, the AC situation can be quite frustrating until you ask them to bring a big fan. Once I figured out how to deal with the heat of the rooms - I really enjoyed the pool, and discovering the various relaxation rooms in the section below the roof deck. Just a few minutes in these rooms was all I needed to feel maximum relaxation. The pool really does seem like it could be the best in town. In the few days of our stay, my child learned to swim in there during family hours - so I’m really grateful. Definitely you get the feeling like the hotel was an afterthought as the high end health club business seems to be their main focus. My experience was that staff could be more welcoming and attentive to the hotel guests; be warned that this building has poor accessibility - the lobby is up quite a steep set of steps - and I constantly had to get the attention of staff and I felt like I was annoying them when I had to ask for help with my son’s pushchair or open the accessibility gate. This was in stark contrast where at other hotels there’s always a concierge who can’t wait to help you… Food and transport options are okay, I recommend using scooters and there’s a really good Uzbek restaurant round the corner from the hotel that I recommend.

The building needs a bit of a fresh refurb, but is mostly acceptable. The facilities are ok, but there are some minor cleanliness issues and frustrations, like the broken water fountain. By far the worst part of Aspria though is the customer service. The sales staff push for contract closure for the gym even if it means lying to clients to close the deal. The customer service staff have no knowledge and no authority to help in most cases. And as soon as a query becomes anything more than simply giving you a gym towel, they advise you to call or email some other team. These other teams never answer their phones not reply to emails, so it feels like everyone is just trying to rid themselves of responsibility of helping. The coworking space is full of loud children in the morning, closes at 2pm, and has WiFi not strong enough to even take a video call. Ultimately, this gym is fine when things are going well. Unfortunately, when they aren't going well (which is too frequently), you won't get any support from staff fixing things