ITravelElite

Visit the Hilton Garden inn in Leiden. With a cat the hotel is very difficult to find. You can see the hotel from the highway but there is no exit.
The hotel is new and the staff also, you can see they are missing experience. The check in was good but no really a Diamond recognizing. There is a restaurant with expensive prices. I paid about 17 euro for a burger.
The rooms are nice, they are new with flat-screens LCD's. The breakfast was to simple, not many choices.
The room-prices are low, so if you want to stay cheap at a Hilton, Leiden is ok. For a nicer Hilton i recommended Den Haag, Rotterdam or Amsterdam.

Zurich

Strange, no new accounts on this hotel so far...
So eventually I stayed at the HGI Leiden two days ago. The hotel is in a neighboring community but can be reached by public transport. Bus no. 37 is running from the train station (Leiden Centraal) every hour (.37, if I remember correctly) to "Katwijk". The bus stop for HGI Leiden is called "Corpus", single fare is 2€. Before arriving at "Corpus" the bus goes by the HGI. So it cannot be missed. Downtown the bus departs .33.
We stayed one night in a king deluxe room. Spacious and comfortable. I found staff very welcoming and efficient. So, if you don't mind the distance from the old town, I would recommend this hotel.
Leiden is charming, beautiful, relaxing and offers a lot. This was my first visit to Leiden and I would love to come back.

fransknorge

PaulRO

Let me share some new information on reaching the HGI by bus/ public transport, from central Leiden. There is a new bus service, and the bus stop has been moved to the actual entrance of HGI. All great news.

FROM: Leiden Centraal Station, which is served directly by frequent Intercity express trains (>4/h) and ‘Sprinter’ stop-at-all-stops trains from Amsterdam downtown, Schiphol Airport, Haarlem, den Haag Centraal, den Haag HS and down-the-line Rotterdam.

LOCATION OF HOTEL: The hotel, and the neighbouring Corpus ‘museum’, are physically in Oestgeest village adjoining Leiden. But that plot of land of the hotel and Corpus is de facto an extension of the spacious Leiden University park to the west of the central station, up to the A44 highway. On other side of which, through ample and proper wide-open underpasses, is the HGI. As the crow flies, it’s about 2 klix from downtown Leiden.

BUS STOP LOCATION: The 4 (5) buses an hour to HGI daytime, 1/h early morning and evenings, depart from the bus station in the forecourt of the railway station. This is on the city side, east of the tracks. Locals call it the ‘front’ (“voor”) side. From the hotel to town, returning, they drop you off there. The rail station concourse under all the rail tracks opens on the city side onto a ‘plain’, bus stops on your right. About 26m from station exit to bus stops. The actual bus stop for each departure varies, and is indicated on a big illuminated panel outside the station. The traditional bus 37 varies; the new line 10 is scheduled to leave from bus stop ‘G’.

TRADITIONAL BUS LINE 37/ FREQUENCIES: The traditional bus is line 37, and is headed for Katwijk, a beachy duney old fishing village at the original North Sea mouth of the Rhine, Roman-era. Long before Katwijk is the HGI stop, about 9 minutes ride. It runs 1x an hour til about 23:00. In rush hours (around 7-9 and 16-17) it runs 2x/h. Departs at 48 (and extra at 18). It might stop on the west (back – “achter”) side of the rail station too, but don’t count on it (is handier for platforms 6 7 8 ish). Pay to driver, or more cheaply with a Public Transport ‘OV-kaart’ which works on all public transport (‘OV’) nationwide. Sold at zillions of places, including the newspaper shop in station concourse, and all over Schiphol station. At full fare, a ride will be around 1 EUR.

NEW BUS LINE 10/ FREQUENCIES. New since August 2018, and on a one-year trial, line 10 is dubbed ‘OV Museumlijn’ and runs a figure of eight all day long past half a dozen museums in the city, including Corpus. The top half of the ‘8’ is its western loop from the station to Naturalis Museum, and Corpus – which shares its stop with HGI. It runs 3x an hour, departure Leiden Centraal station around 13, 33 and 53. Heading for ‘Corpus’. Returns from HGI at 05, 25 and 45. Last loop around 16:30 – it officially runs to museum opening hours, 7 days a week. Is a regular OV bus, small-size, very PMR accessible and loads of space. Takes normal OV-kaart (~ 1 EUR), see above, or a branded ticket. About 5 minute ride from station. Its turn-around stop at the top of the loop, and its schedule ‘buffer’, is the HGI-Corpus stop, so it normally sits there a few minutes. The driver can see people scuttling the 34 metres from the hotel front door to the bus stop, and will thus wait.

ALL IN ALL, A REAL BOON.

I shall be happy to try to advise any real HGI client or staff on these buses. Just tell the management how helpful I was. ;-)

Of course, check for service switches or road works. At the national OV service 9292.nl (a wacky and wobbly website), or the actual nice people at 0900-9292 (a paid call). The bus company with the contracts to operate lines 37 and 10 is called Arriva. The staff at the local Arriva service number have never knowingly told a porky and are v helpful. The hotel can help you find that number.

My perspective in writing this is to encourage more riders on line 37 and especially line 10, which ticks all my boxes, so that it stays available for me. Deal? As a mobile-challenged, visually-impaired passenger, I cannot have a bus service go bad on me. And I do want to get to – and sadly leave – the HGI hassle-free. From that POV, I can add that the delightful railway service staff (blue uniform, red hats) have a central Information kiosk in the concourse at the entrance to platform 1-3, from where they will accompany anyone in need to wherever in the station. Their tribe is at all sizeable stations. Angels on rails.


DON’T WANT TO MEET PEOPLE and LEARN THE COUNTRY? If you’re unused to the true splendour of public transport which we have in NL, sure, taxis are available from the railway station forecourt. Cost about E11-14. The taxi rank is more difficult to reach than the bus stops. Bad signage and a slippery slope up. Furthermore, on arrival, the hotel entrance is 11 metres from where the taxis stop, and only 34 metres from the new Very Convenient bus stop. The bus drivers are to a woman/man very decent folk. The taxi gang assigned to that Leiden rank would win my LifeLong Prize for the Taxi Rank with Most Attitude in all-Benelux, and together with the operators (sic) at Amsterdam station, they get the taxi profession a bad name.

Posted 19 November 2018

Leiden / Hilton Garden Inn / buses / Line 37 / Line 10 / OV-Museumlijn / Leiden Centraal /

nkob

good morning
we have our first experience with hilton and specific Garden inn leiden
reception good and helpfull
breakfast decent and good quality
and again a good hospitality
We got our room on the 6th floor with view on A44
theweather was strong winds rain and cold and because we are used to a lot warmer climate we found the room climate too cold
after a phone cal with the reception we are provided with a electric heater
that made a real difference !!
bus line 10 still exist and runs regular
reception provides you with info about times
greetings
cornelis

nkob

payment at bus only with card no cash anymore
hilton points in 24 hours in my account !
overall decent hotel next experience hilton soestduinen
greetings
cornelis

itisme

Stayed here last week. Obv. due to the Corona virus there were… 2 guests.. But it was open! Parking very convenient here!! Easy access to highway and all surround areas. Macdonalds closeby if one wants something fast. Paid 89eur/night (booked lastminute). Staff VERY friendly here but obv. all facilities closed altho they do have a small pantry where they sell drinks and snacks for now. Limited room-service menu also available. Staff during day limited to 1 receptionist and a cook. Rooms do get cleaned in morning if you want. Only 1 level open so obv. no upgrades (besided queen to king rm).

Rooms very cold tho and couldn't get it warm with A/C. Didn't bother to ask tho about it so might be able to be fixed by them.

Sisosig

Hilton Garden Inn Leiden will be going up for auction on Tuesday, July 11 at 11:00 AM CEST. But before that, you'll have to be approved by both Hilton and the mortgage lender.

Hilton Garden Inn Leiden - BVA Auctions (bva-auctions.com)

You should probably also lay new carpet and put back a chair in the King rooms, because a side table and a reading lamp are not very functional by themselves.

Dirk.On.Tour

The auction is on July 11, not June.

Sisosig

Thank you. Normally I would have pressed the Like button, but once again that button doesn't work, at least not in all threads.

nldogbert

I indeed read about this over the weekend - on one hand, yes I am surprised, on the other, not so. Anyone knows why exactly are they being auctioned off?
From my last stay
- as usual location is quite bad and not really convenient if you have no car
- staff mediocre
- service and HHonors recognition - nothing more nothing less.

This was in my books one of the worst property of Hilton family in NL
Wonder what will happen to this property in the coming months.

Cheers!

the810

Looking forward to my stay there in July, lol 😃 I mostly chose it because I want to be based in Leiden (even if it's at the edge of Leiden), but perhaps I've made a mistake?
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Freetotravel

I stayed here a number of times but not recently. Tended to be when I was on a tight budget. I liked renting a bike and cycling round the countryside outside Leiden and the city itself is nice. Traveling to Amsterdam by train is easy but the hotel isn’t anywhere near the train station.

But it’s true that Hilton is pretty strong in NL with a number of good properties to choose from. And the Hampton near Schipol is also a budget property but with a lot more going for it.

tem123

Agree car is needed, but now they charge 12.50 EUR for parking when it used to be free in the underground carpark

Sisosig

Wow that's hefty. When I last stayed there, it was 5 EUR. Had been so for about a year or so, but they never charged me, maybe because of my status and having dinner the night before. Having to pay that much for parking would be a reason for me to avoid the hotel or maybe take a 15 minute walk from an area where it is still free.

The hotel has recently been taken over by International Hotel Capital Partners (IHCP), who also run Mercure Amersfoort Centre, Renaissance Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Moxy Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Moxy The Hague and Residence Inn The Hague.

Stayed twice at the Renaissance and both Moxies, did like them. Probably will try out the others too. The Leiden property is going to remain with Hilton Garden Inn.