Best Western Premier Parkhotel Engelsburg

I stayed at this historic mansion hotel while recovering from a back procedure I had in Germany. Great hotel! Amazing staff, breakfast rooms , beds. All superb! But the staff if so wonderful and proactively friendly! I’m still giddy from the experience!

I booked the penthouse room for two nights for our family while we were visiting for the Taylor Swift concert in Gelsenkirchen. I made our reservation nine months before our visit directly through the hotel’s website. I received an email confirmation from the hotel at that time and then never received any other communication from the hotel. When we arrived we were given our key and took the elevator to the floor labeled “penthouse”—however our room was across the hall from the penthouse and instead of having a bedroom, a sitting room and a terrace with air conditioning, it was a hallway with a room with a sad sofa bed and a bedroom, no air conditioning and no terrace. When we inquired at the desk we were told we had two reservations and they canceled one of them and we would have to wait for the manager to arrive the next day. My husband asked about the air conditioner. First he was told we needed to turn the dials on the walls in the room, but that did nothing. Then we were told they would send someone to the room. The man who arrived said “this room has no air conditioning” and handed us a fan telling us the hotel was full as were all the others in the area due to the concert so basically “this is it”. When we tried to open the windows the noise from a band playing filled the room. We could either be hot or be subjected to a terrible band. By this point our daughter was crying and I was furious. I checked my email again for any correspondence from the hotel. I couldn’t find anything showing a second reservation. Then I remembered seeing something about the hotel being affiliated with Best Western, so I searched for emails from Best Western. I found one that I had missed from the day before. It had a separate confirmation number and showed a lower level “superior room with double bed” and a higher rate than I had booked for the Penthouse. I called Best Western customer service and they could not explain how the room type, rate or confirmation number changed or when the change occurred. They confirmed that the only email they sent me was the one the day before check in. They called the hotel and tried to resolve the issue, but they also had no luck. I’m pretty sure someone arrived before us and got put into the penthouse and our “second reservation” was created by the hotel to move us to the room across the hall at the current higher rate. Thankfully we found an amazing room at the Residence Inn in Dortmund City and we moved there immediately. I guess with all the fans in town from across the world it was deemed acceptable to downgrade guests traveling from far away who likely would not be returning anyway. This experience made certain we will never return to this hotel.