"I had a terrible and extremely disappointing experience at FIVE Zurich, and I strongly recommend that anyone considering this hotel understands exactly what they are booking before paying particularly if you are offered a room in the “Superior East Wing.”
For anyone who does not know the property, FIVE Zurich is not simply one hotel building where all rooms are located close to the reception, pool and other facilities.
There is the main hotel, where the reception, swimming pool and principal facilities are located, and there is a separate building called the East Wing, located away from the main hotel. This distinction made an enormous difference to my stay and, in my experience, was not communicated clearly enough before booking.
The East Wing feels like a completely different hotel
To reach the main hotel from the East Wing, you have to use a very long underground connection with no windows. In my experience, the journey took around 15 minutes on foot.
Walking through such a long, enclosed and isolated underground passage — particularly at night — was extremely unpleasant.
The hotel does offer a car transfer between the buildings as an alternative. Unfortunately, during my stay, this service was unreliable. I tried calling several times on multiple occasions without receiving an answer and was sometimes left waiting for a long time.
So in practice, I found myself having to choose between walking through the long underground connection or waiting for a transfer that I could not reliably reach.
No reception or visible security presence at night
What concerned me even more was the situation in the East Wing itself.
During my stay, there was no reception or visible security presence in the East Wing at night. As a woman travelling alone, I found this particularly uncomfortable.
You also cannot simply park your car next to the East Wing and conveniently access your room.
This means that staying there feels very different from staying in the main building of a five-star hotel, where you would normally expect reception, staff, services and facilities to be readily accessible.
Far away from the pool and main hotel facilities
If you want to use the swimming pool, go to reception or access the main hotel facilities, you need to travel back to the main building.
This is an important point that guests should understand before booking, because the East Wing is not simply a few steps away from the main hotel facilities.
The location of the East Wing itself was also disappointing to me. The surroundings were noisy, my room had no proper view, and the overall environment did not correspond to what I expected when booking a hotel in this category.
Cleanliness and room quality far below expectations. Yellow on the bathroom door.
The cleanliness was also disappointing and below the standard I would expect from a five-star property.
The room and overall East Wing experience felt basic compared with the price being charged. In my opinion, it was nowhere near the five-star experience I believed I was paying for.
For the quality, location, cleanliness, lack of readily accessible services and inconvenience of reaching the main facilities, I found the room far too expensive.
Be extremely careful with expensive upgrades
Another major issue for me was transparency around the room categories and upgrades.
The hotel offers expensive room upgrades, but when paying significantly more for an upgraded room, guests should be clearly informed about not only the room itself but also which building it is in, where that building is located, how far it is from the main facilities, what services are available there at night, parking arrangements, the view and how guests are expected to travel between the buildings.
I did not feel that the overall reality of the East Wing experience was communicated clearly enough to me.
Had I fully understood beforehand what staying there actually involved, I would never have accepted this room or paid this price.
Not a five-star experience
The most disappointing aspect was the enormous gap between my expectations of FIVE Zurich as a five-star hotel and my actual experience in the East Wing.
A room may technically belong to the same hotel, but that does not mean the guest experience is equivalent.
Between the separate location, approximately 15-minute underground journey in my experience, unreliable transfer service, absence of a reception or visible security presence there at night, distance from the pool and main facilities, noise, poor view, cleanliness issues and the price charged, the East Wing did not remotely feel like a five-star experience to me.
I left feeling seriously misled and extremely disappointed. I genuinely wish I had known all of this before booking."
