Holiday Inn Krakow City Centre is my favorite hotel location for Krakow at only 5 minutes walk to Rynek Glowny, the Old Town Market Square and 15 minutes to Plac Nowy Kazimierz, the center of the nightlife zone for pubs. Holiday Inn Krakow is a hotel I have stayed at two times before, in 2016 and 2017, when there was remodeling work at the hotel. Our stay this summer exceeded our expectations with a platinum member upgrade.
My wife is not a hotel geek and generally has a difficult time remembering which hotel was which when I refer to our past vacations. There has to be some memory I can trigger for her to know which hotel I am talking about when I say something like, “We are staying at Hotel Indigo Krakow and Holiday Inn Krakow again on this trip.” We have stayed in eight different hotels around Krakow over the past three years.
Our first stay of 5 nights in July 2016 at Holiday Inn Krakow is one memory I can trigger for Kelley by saying it was the ‘dungeon room hotel’. The memory of a first floor room facing blank interior of a white walled courtyard where we had no room view for the week is one she remembers. The other memory that triggers Holiday Inn Krakow for her was on our last night there in 2016 when we talked to the young bartender for an hour about his upbringing in a Krakow suburb.
Holiday Inn Krakow was 15,000 points per night on that summer 2016 trip. The hotel went to 20,000 points in 2017, then 25,000 points per night in 2018. This UNESCO World Heritage city has one of the largest tourism markets in Europe, known for its centuries old architecture, multitude of cheap restaurants and bars and as the gateway city for a day trip to Auschwitz concentration camp museum and Wieliczka Salt Mine.
My second stay at Holiday Inn Krakow in January 2017 was a better room in regard to furnishings, but still in a location that faced the interior white walls. That time is memorable for the jackhammer sounds as I worked in the room in the morning writing. The real deal of that stay was earning 43,000 points on a $100 stay through a combination of two different IHG promotions.
Holiday Inn Krakow City Centre is rated #16 of 268 hotels in Krakow ranked on TripAdvisor.com.
Third time is a charm
Executive Room 601
This third stay was once again booked to fulfill my May-July 2018 IHG Rewards Club Accelerate promotion tasks and earn 9,600 bonus points for two stays booked through the IHG app and 16,900 bonus points Accelerate achievement. We had stayed the night before at Hotel Indigo Krakow, about 20 minutes walk through the Old Town Planty greenbelt, which had historically been the location of medieval city walls encircling the Stare Miasto-Old Town. The walls were removed and turned into a park space in the 1820s.
I booked Holiday Inn Krakow on an advance purchase Standard Room rate at 380pln/$102.46usd.Â
Loyalty Traveler -Â Hotel Indigo Krakow Old Town great location for tourists
Our room was not ready when we stopped by the hotel around 12:30pm. The receptionist said it would be ready soon and we checked our luggage. She also offered us drink coupons while we waited.
That was ideal for us since we wanted to watch Tour de France and have a beer and achieved both objectives at the hotel without having to wander around Krakow looking for a pub showing the cycling race.
We were there less than 30 minutes before the receptionist came to us in the lobby bar and handed us keys to Room 601. She pointed to the elevators in the direction of the bar. That was a good sign to me since it meant we were staying on a different side of the hotel than my previous two stays.
We opened the door at the end of the hall to find an extra large corner room.
We headed out for Kazimierz to drink beer and find some food. Kuchnia u Doroty became one of our favorite restaurants for good quality inexpensive meals in Kazimierz. We ate there three times over the following week. The place is so popular that reservations were required to get a table after 6pm.
The night before we had wandered all around Old Town and the walkway along the river looking for a good vantage point to watch the lunar eclipse blood moon. When we returned back to Holiday Inn Krakow in the evening, we discovered if only we had been in room 601 the night before.
We had a comfortable night in Holiday Inn Krakow Room 601.Â
By the way, the only change I really noticed in the hotel from our previous stays was a new restaurant entrance. We were there on a Saturday and there was a private Jewish event happening in the restaurant space, so I only saw the stairway entrance.
The next day we headed to Krakow Glowny bus station for a 90 minute ride to Oswiecim, where we stayed two nights at the new Hampton Inn Oswiecim during our time in the city on a visit to Auschwitz.
Loyalty Traveler -Â Hampton Inn Oswiecim on a trip to Auschwitz
Loyalty Traveler -Â Auschwitz-Birkenau tour in photos
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