Review: Dorothea Hotel, Budapest, Autograph Collection (Marriott Bonvoy)

This is our review of the Dorothea Hotel, Autograph Collection, in Budapest.

The Marriott Bonvoy® American Express Credit Card® is currently offering 60,000 bonus Marriott Bonvoy® points for a limited time.

To show you what sort of hotels you could visit around Europe with Bonvoy points, the HfP team split up and visited four different properties across four different brands in four different countries.  We’ll be bringing you these reviews on alternate Saturdays whilst the 60,000 points offer is running.

If you want to learn more about the Marriott Bonvoy® American Express Credit Card® 60,000 bonus Marriott Bonvoy points promotion, then read our article here.

I (Rob) decided to kick off the series with a trip to Budapest.

Marriott provided all four hotels in this series for free for review purposes. HfP paid for all of its flights and incidental expenses. The articles are not sponsored and Marriott has not seen the reviews before publication.

The Dorothea Hotel website is here.

What is Autograph Collection?

Autograph Collection is one of my favourite Marriott Bonvoy brands. It allows independent five star hotels to join the Marriott ‘system’ without having to sign up to the strict brand standards that would be required with the core Marriott chains.

Autograph has allowed Bonvoy members to access some excellent independent hotels – you may remember that The University Arms in Cambridge was one of my ‘hotels of the year’ in 2022. You can earn and spend Bonvoy points as usual, and all Marriott Bonvoy status benefits will be honoured.

The story of the Dorothea Hotel

The Dorothea Hotel opened in November 2023. If you are looking for a new hotel where you know that everything will be fresh and functioning, this is the place for you.

It is housed across three historic buildings in District V, just a block from the river and the bridges that take you up to the castle. (The river-front InterContinental is very close, if you know where that is.) The hotel is named after Archduchess Dorothea, an influential character of the 1800s.

High profile Italian architect and designer Piero Lissoni had the tricky job of converting and merging a bank head office (built 1873), the head office of a shipping company (built 1913) and a modernist building with art deco and Bauhaus elements (built 1937). One result of this is that each level has two buttons in the lift because the floors do not meet up exactly across the three buildings.

Taking up an entire city block, it is a multi-use project. The rear of the building – still to be completed – will comprise high-end apartments and restaurants. There is a casino under the building, albeit not physically linked to the hotel. Some of the rooms you see overlooking the central hotel atrium are actually private apartments and not hotel rooms.

The location is remarkably good for everything you might want to do and once I arrived I never took a taxi, tram, bus or metro during my two night stay.

The lobby

Budapest Airport is not well connected to the city so I took a taxi for around £25. (I think …. at 452 forints to the £ the calculations are not easy! You can pay for virtually everything with Euro but the exchange rate is usually 5%-10% above the spot rate.)

You enter into the highly impressive lobby above, which is a mix of heritage features, a huge (new) glass chandelier and modern photography. What look like historical paintings are actually carefully constructed modern-day images with individual twists.

The lobby is surprisingly calm because nothing happens there. Check in, concierge and the lifts are in a separate area to your left. To the right is the entrance to the all-day cafe bar, which is also accessible from the street and serves a mix of guests and shoppers. To reach the main restaurant you need to head up the grand staircase.

The heart of the hotel is the huge atrium, which comes as a surprise to anyone expecting a heritage interior. Glassed over, you can see the restaurant and breakfast area to the left and a second bar to the right.

A contemporary or a heritage room?

Slightly confusingly, at least in terms of pigeon-holing the hotel, there are two totally different types of room at the Dorothea Hotel. There are 216 rooms and suites in total.

‘Contemporary’ rooms come in two variations. Some overlook the atrium and have no external view. My room, an Atrium Suite, was one of them. There are also contemporary rooms with a street view.

You also have ‘heritage’ rooms, based in the oldest part of the hotel, all of which overlook the street. I took a look at all three types.

Here is the bedroom of my Atrium Suite. The window on the right looks into the atrium:

…. and even has a balcony!

You can’t see some of the detailing from the bedroom photograph. The brown panel above the bed, for example, is a carving – all of the rooms I saw had these. The furnishings were of the highest quality.

One issue with the atrium rooms is that they are a little dark despite the large (internal) windows. It’s not helped by the traditional European hotel trait of having very few lights.

The hotel told me that local guests like the modernity of the atrium rooms with an internal view. If you are coming to Budapest to embrace the art nouveau architecture, I think you would be happier with a street view.

More on those room types in a minute. Back in my Atrium Suite you have this very smart bathroom:

The teal colour (as used heavily in Clubrooms airport lounges in the UK!) is very effective. There is only a single sink, even in a suite. The shower is very classy:

Toiletries are in large bottles and branded ‘Botaniq’. Suites come with extra amenities such as shaving and dental kits.

The bathroom is not totally private from the bedroom as you can see in this shot:

….. although the shower and loo have their own doors.

I won’t dwell too much on the living area, as the standard atrium rooms don’t have one, but it was well designed with some interesting art books. A welcome plate of mini cakes was provided.

There was no desk and whilst I could work from the table it did mean that my laptop cable was running across the room to the nearest socket. There are two TVs, one in the bedroom and one in the living area.

A coffee machine was provided with some lovely mugs and glassware but (a recurring complaint of mine) the capsules were not labelled. For the first time in a while, I found the mini-bar fully stocked with sparkling and still wine, local beer, soft drinks and water. A refillable glass bottle of still water was provided and there are refill stations by the lifts.

If you take a standard atrium room, you will get what I pictured above but without the living area.

And in the heritage rooms ….

The ‘heritage’ rooms are easily identifiable by the doors, each of which features a different element taken from a female portrait in the Hungarian National Gallery. They are surprisingly effective:

Inside you will see a modern take on a traditional four poster bed:

and

The windows have views of the neighbouring streets and the rooms overall are a lot brighter.

What really impressed me was the Studio Suite. This has the ‘contemporary’ decor scheme with an external view. Set in a corner of the building, the one I saw had wraparound windows with a great view over the square:

This is apparently a good room to book when the Christmas market is in full swing.

Whilst I am not going to go into details here, those with a big budget can book one of the suites added onto the roof of the building. Scroll back up to the top photograph and you will see some very modern boxes on the top floor. Some of these have side river views from their terraces:

There will also be a Sky Bar on the top floor at some point, but this is not expected to open until early 2025.

Food and drink at the Dorothea Hotel

Breakfast is served in Pavilon restaurant in the atrium.

Depending on what package you book, there is a comprehensive buffet with an additional list of cooked items which may or may not be included. There is a mix of egg dishes along with open faced sandwiches, porridge, French toast and pancakes.

The restaurant is very proud of the fact that virtually everything (apparently everything bar smoked salmon and avocado) is sourced from the region. All of the buffet items looked home made, even the breakfast cereal. Local items such as Hungarian ratatouille and vegetable egg broth add a twist to your usual luxury hotel buffet. There was also shakshuka.

I’m putting in a picture of the pancakes because they were exceptionally good – cooked fresh and immediately delivered to my table.

I also had lunch in Pavilon where I took the crispy chicken thighs, cooked with pickled apple, mushroom emulsion and truffle mash. The list of main courses has a strong Hungarian feel and, unlike many high end hotels, you won’t be missing out on local cuisine if you eat here.

To prove how Hungarian it is …. the wine list is 100% Hungarian. It is a very long, multi-page, wine list and is totally local.

The hotel even makes its own butter for the restaurant, which was infused with spices and green tinted!

(It’s worth pointing out, because it is very easy to miss, that in one corner of the atrium is an original 19th century staircase which takes you down to the ground floor.)

The other eating option is Anton’s Bar & Deli which is a cafe bar with street and hotel entrances. There is a coffee stand here if you want a simple ‘coffee and pastry’ breakfast and live music on Friday and Saturday nights.

Here is the impressive bar:

…. and this is how the seating looks:

There will eventually be two other restaurants when the apartment side of the building is complete. BiBo will be an Andalusian brasserie whilst Alelí is planned as an authentic osteria from Italy.

Pool and gym

Despite being a city centre hotel, the Dorothea has a 15m swimming pool. It’s not somewhere to sit and laze for an afternoon but it is very atmospheric.

There is also a good size gym (no views as underground) and a spa.

Conclusion

The Dorothea Hotel is difficult to explain – three historical buildings but with a generally modernist interior, except for the heritage rooms.

Having seen multiple room types, it is a different experience (neither better or worse, just different) between the very modern atrium rooms, the more traditional and street facing heritage rooms and the street facing contemporary rooms and suites. I’d recommend you take a street view if you are in Budapest for sightseeing.

Budapest isn’t short of good hotels – it’s not even short of Marriott Bonvoy hotels, with W, Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, Courtyard, Four Points, The Luxury Collection (Matilde Palace) and Marriott Executive Apartments – but there is a LOT to like here. The location is excellent, the Hungarian-focused restaurant is very accomplished (and even breakfast has some unusual twists) and the pool and spa are an added bonus.

As a brand new hotel, everything works and everything is fresh and modern.

Prices for a Friday to Sunday stay in early June run from €315 per night whether you want a contemporary atrium or ‘heritage’ room. However, I’d plump for a Studio Suite which is only about 25% more expensive and is actually cheaper than the Atrium Suite which I had.

For points, you are looking at around 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy® points per night for the same June weekend for an Atrium Room. This means that you can get one free night here with the current special sign-up bonus on the Marriott Bonvoy® American Express® Card.

The hotel also offers cash upgrades on redemptions, confirmable at the time of booking. For €60 (based on early June) you can upgrade your reward night to a contemporary or heritage street view room.

Thanks to Eliza and Aletta for taking the time to give me a tour of the hotel and explain its history with such enthusiasm.

The hotel website is here if you want to learn more or book.

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