We spent 5 nights here on a recent trip to Berlin.

The Good:
Location is great, short walk to Potsdamer Platz & nearby S/U-Bahn stations etc. Room (1st floor) was OK. Housekeeping was excellent & the hotel in general was very neat/clean. Staff were friendly & helpful. Car parking was €14 per night in the secure underground car park. Great selection at breakfast with plenty of everything available. No real complaints on anything above.

The Bad:
NO WiFi access available despite claims (still) on their website. We would NOT have stayed there if we knew this was unavailable.
Broadband was, apparently, available in room at a cost of €4 per hour! It's no wonder they scrapped their WiFi service - make more money charging for it! In a $200 per night hotel, in 2007, in a major
technological European city, WiFi should be available AS ADVERTISED. Very angry about this.

Air Conditioning: NONE. It wasn't the warmest weather ever but I need
a cool room to sleep in & cool our room was not :( Sure, the AC fan worked occassionally but no cool air flowed from the vent. Some days,
the fan didn't even work. Again, AC is something I always look for when booking & wouldn't have stayed there if they said the AC didn't work.

Couple of smaller niggles too - asked in reception on our first night
for a UK adapter but they didn't have any saying they'd all been stolen by guests. It's the first hotel we've stayed in that didn't have an adapter. Our booking confirmation also mentioned our free daily newspaper but staff said we would have to pay for it. Needless to say, we didn't.

So, a good enough hotel in a good location with nice enough staff but very angry about the lack of AC & Wifi having spent $1000 for 5 nights.

We stayed here 6 days. When we 1st checked in, the shower in our room was broken, we told managment about it and they had it fixed within 24 hours, which is 23.5 more hours than I would have expected. Also, we were told there was free wireless internet in the lobby. That was true for the 1st two days. One the 3rd night, we were given 3 different answers about why it didnt work, they lied to us and were rude. On the 4th night, we came back to our room and it was too warm, we found that the air conditioning was broken. Fortunately, the window opended so we could cool off. however, we were on the 3rd story, so if you have children, keep them away from the windows. Also, it was really loud outside, drunk people screming all night which made us close our window and deal with the heat, a no win situation.
we would not reccomend this hotel to anyone unless you are geting an incredible rate, like almost free.

We just got back from a wonderful vacation in Berlin and the Holiday Inn Express was the perfect choice for our stay! It is situated 12 minutes from Potsdamer Platz, 15 minutes from Checkpoint Charlie and around 25 from the Brandenburg Gate. The room was small, but, very clean and had all of the amenities. The breakfast buffet had a great selection of food, but, best of all, it had fresh German Bread and all the cappuccino you could drink! The staff did a great job attending to the buffet. The front desk attendants were wonderful also! They gave us quite a few tips, directions etc.

As far as the previous guest from Sydney, your first room was obviously a Handicapped room. In regards to the TV, I'm sorry that Germany doesn't speak more English for you. Just out of curiosity, did you fly from Australia, just to watch television?

I felt like I was staying in a completely different place to everyone else who has reviewed this hotel. So much so, I repeatedly checked the address of this hotel against everyone’s reviews. Alas, I was staying at the right place, but my experience was far from excellent.
This is a well-located no frills hotel best used as a base to explore Berlin, but is confused as to who its market actually is (what it is doing advertising its business credentials when it has no business facilities, I do not understand). Everything was barely average – rooms, breakfast, service, cleanliness etc. etc. etc.
During my 3 night stay, the hotel was at capacity – maybe explaining the deterioration in quality from that experienced by previous reviewers. There were always long queues at reception and only 1 person to deal with the queries. The staff throughout the hotel appeared harried and stressed.
Our initial room was reminiscent of a hospital room. We asked to change rooms the second night as the first room was too eerie – I half expected to see hospital orderlies coming in and there was a nurse call button in our room. Our second room was an improvement. For a hotel that is only apparently 2 years old, the furnishings look worn. There are the bare basics in each room – bed/ desk/ chair and a small open wardrobe. I agree with a previous reviewer – the bathrooms are strange. Our first room had an ‘open plan’ bathroom with no barrier at all around the shower!!! (very large flood occurred).
Housekeeping was not up to standard. Stray hair left behind in the bathroom from previous occupants is not a good look.
There was a continental breakfast buffet that would have been ok, had it not been so overcrowded that there was actually food available. The staff seemed to be having difficulty keeping up with demand. On the 3 mornings there, there were always groups of people gathered around the empty bread basket ready to pounce like vultures when the bread actually arrived.
There is 1 internet console in the ‘business’ corner in the internet but it was impossible to actually use it. There is no wireless facility in this hotel. Unless you speak German, TV viewing is limited unless you pay for digital TV. For English speakers, there was the choice of CNN and Eurosport. They advertised BBC world, but we were unable to get a signal as the TV was analogue and BBC world has gone digital.
If you want a budget no-frills hotel, with a good location to sight-see, stay here – but I suspect you could do better for your $$$ elsewhere in Berlin.