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Good Morning HfPers,
My wife and I stayed at the Kimpton De Witt last weekend (23/6 – 26/6). I thought you might be interested in our experience, given we leveraged Diamond Elite status, Ambassador free night voucher, a redemption and the Amex IHG statement credit.
Reservation
We booked the Thursday and Friday nights using the Ambassador free night voucher and the Saturday night using IHG points (54k). When we booked (end of March), the Thursday night was the cheapest €299, Friday night was €329 and the Saturday night was €349 for a King Bed Essential. Therefore, getting the Friday night free and only paying 54k points (c.€250 based on £0.004 per point) for the Saturday night appears represented a good return.Room Upgrade
The hotel autmatically upgraded the Thursday/Friday nights of our stay to a Kind Bed Premium room, which looks like a 2 category upgrade. When we emailed them to link the two bookings the redemption night then automatically upgraded. Both were clearly visible in the App before arriving.Benefits
Welcome Amenity – The breakfast was happily offerred across all three nights. The breakfast was nice, especially the cooked to order items and the breads. Even though the hotel was relatively full, the breakfast room busy and accepting walk-ups, we never had to wait more than a minute to be welcomed and sat.Bottle of Wine – We had a bottle of red wine and tulip chocolates waiting for us in the room.
Social Password – The social password got us 2x “free drinks vouchers”. There was some confusion here, because they were clearly handed over as being for “free drinks”. When we were at the bar and asked what we could have, we were told anything. My wife ordered a €13 cocktail and, well I went extravagant and ordered a rather expensive whisky. It was only when the bill arrived did it become clear to me that the 2 vouchers were both worth €15 each and if I had bothered to read them, I would have very quickly spotted this. My misktake and nobody elses. Good job we needed to spend more money anyway!
Wine Hour – Was held daily between 16.00 – 17.00. The red and white available was pleasant enough and the small canopes tasted good but they are not in anyway substantial. If you didn’t fancy wine, they would serve you a beer instead.
Amex Statement Credit – Given we are unlikely to stay again at another IC, Kimpton or Regent prior to the offer expiring, we decided to spend a bit more in the hotel and trigger the spend £350 get £100 statement credit. I received the email confirming the offer had been triggered on Monday, not surprisingly the statement credit hasn’t been received yet.
Stroop Waffle – Then on departure, we were given 2x stroopwaffles for good measure.
All-in-all a good hotel experience, with good recognition and application of benefits.
Cautionary Notes / Advice
ATMS – We really struggled to find ATMs in Amsterdam that weren’t charging fees (a growing trend in Europe unfortunately). However, we did in the end work out that the ATMs in the Albert Heijn supermarkets were still free to use (if they were working). Not that you need cash in Amsterdam but we wanted to use June’s allowances on our Curve, Monese and Revolut cards towards a future trip where we will need cash.
AMS – We arrived at AMS 3 hours prior to the departure of our flight on Sunday with only hand luggage and fast track security. It still took us 2h 30 minutes to get to the gate. The airport was in utter chaos. The queue for security went clean out the door. Given we had fast track security we were permitted to join the queue halfway through, it still took 1h40 to get to the scanners. It then took another 35 minutes to get through passport control and then a 15 minutes walk to the H gates. If we hadn’t had fast track security, I think you could’ve added another hour onto the wait. Plus checked luggage and I think you are looking at another 30-60 minutes as well. Though we really enjoyed returning to Amsterdam, getting out via the airport was such a horrendous experience we won’t be returning until things return to normal. Arrival into AMS was a breeze however.
Anyway – apologies for the long note, hopefully some of it us useful.
Phil
Most useful, Phil – thank you! We are at the De Witt on points in August and based on various reports it does sound promising (especially as we only paid about 30k points per night!).
Not looking forward to the AMS experience though…
Not looking forward to the AMS experience though…
Fingers crossed it has improved by then!
Fingers crossed it has improved by then!
I came across this on Twitter yesterday and decided we’d return by Eurostar, just in case!
https://twitter.com/arvinkgeorge/status/1543859049099313152?s=21&t=bkeGuaikIzEE6WqfTvk2Qw
Issues at AMS very much depend on the day of the week and time of day and airline.
KLM has a lot of issues simply because of the number of flights it has and the number of passengers it carries
End of May of too me just over half an hour from getting off the train at 07.30 to clearing passport control and 10 of that was issues with BA checkin as the baggage belt had broken. True I had priority security but the non priorty line was moving quickly – and like the priority line would have been quicker if people were actually ready for the security process and then passpoirt control.
@PeteM – Someone last autumn posted that offer and I booked as 30k is an absolute bargain for the de Witt. Unfortunatly due to another trip I had to cancel that tripI do like the De Witt. Great location and great hotel and staff. They did have a blip (pre pandemic) when the wine hour became a free cocktail redemned via a coaster left in your room by housekeeping rather than wine but thats now back to normal. In February they had no probloem topping up glasses
Issues at AMS very much depend on the day of the week and time of day and airline.
Totally, I just decided I didn’t want to spend the holiday worrying about what we’ll find at the airport at the end! And August is likely to see things get worse before they get better…
I can confirm everything @Supergers49 and @ChrisC said about the Kimpton was spot on and we had exactly the same positive experience. This must have been one of my best IHG redemptions ever – 3nts over Pride for just about 100k points, with cash rates running north of £1k.
We did have an uneventful return via Eurostar (via Brussels for the day), but those in our group who flew back had zero issues at AMS, the longest regular security queue taking about 30mins (across Sun and Mon).
One thing that was painful was immigration at AMS on the way in, even for EU citizens. They’d randomly turn the egates on, but if you were already in a queue you were stuck. The whole experience took about 40mins with EU passports, easily over an hour+ without them (and the queueing system was fairly empty when we got there). It defies belief that for an airport this size they have like three desks open and the queue regularly spills into the terminal! The direct Eurostar does help avoid this.
I had a slightly less positive experience at the Kimpton de Witt this last weekend (stayed 3 nights: Fri, Sat and Sun) as a Diamond. Booked it very last minute during IHG’s “sale” on Wednesday: got a “King Bed Essential” on points for nights 1 and 3, and had to pay cash for night 2 as there were no rewards rooms available (I paid c€350 for a King Premium).
I called the day before to ensure the 3 nights were linked, and was told that they had been and that I was allocated the Premium room for all 3 nights. Check-in was far from straight forward and took well over 30 minutes despite there being no queue: I was originally handed the key to “your King room Sir, and we’ve made sure that it’s the same room for all 3 nights”. I then asked them to confirm that it was the Premium room, at which point they sheepishly explained that it wasn’t. I wasn’t impressed with them trying to palm me off with a cheaper room for the middle night than the one I had paid cash for. Eventually it was resolved but only by me staying in the Essential room for night 1, and then moving to a Premium room for nights 2 and 3. I double checked that my welcome amenity of free breakfast was noted in the system, which they confirmed.
In contrast to @Supergers49 we didn’t think that much of the breakfast. Things didn’t get off to a great start on our first morning when they tried to charge me for it (despite it being my welcome amenity), although that was quickly corrected. Over our 3 days we had undercooked soft boiled eggs (runny white anyone?) on one occasion, similar with both poached eggs on another, and finally on our final day one of the poached eggs was cooked through solidly whilst one was cooked perfectly. Fresh melon was unripe, there wasn’t a choice of juices (just orange), and they got my coffee order wrong twice. Small things individually, but collectively leave a bigger negative impression.
Rooms were fine, but nothing special. The Premium was definitely a bit bigger than the Essential room, but both rooms suffered from lack of storage space in the bathroom – single standalone sinks (sorry, I mean basins….) with just a small shelf on which to place your items.
The stand-out for us was the cocktail bar Super Lyan – despite the slightly bizarre sounding takes on more classic drinks, they were exceptionally tasty.
Overall, whilst the hotel is centrally located (especially if travelling by Eurostar) I would hesitate to recommend it based on the experience we had.
I had a slightly less positive experience at the Kimpton de Witt this last weekend.
To top it all, the night I paid cash for has now posted as non-qualifying for points….
ATMS – We really struggled to find ATMs in Amsterdam that weren’t charging fees (a growing trend in Europe unfortunately). However, we did in the end work out that the ATMs in the Albert Heijn supermarkets were still free to use (if they were working). Not that you need cash in Amsterdam but we wanted to use June’s allowances on our Curve, Monese and Revolut cards towards a future trip where we will need cash.
Phil
I didn’t receive any additional charges using Geldmaat ATMs using a Nationwide FlexPlus account/card, the machines did ask whether I wanted to be charged in EUR or GBP, however, and I selected EUR.
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