Tuesday, March 18, 2008Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch Frankfurt

Lufthansa First Class passengers are entitled to a complimentary day room at the Kempinski hotel. I found the details on the Lufthansa website. I emailed the hotel when making arrangements for the trip, mentioned I was a Lufthansa first class passenger (but didn’t mention the free room benefit) and they replied with a discount rate of 79 euros. Well, if I was going to pay for the room I’d just book the airport Sheraton! A quick email back with a link to the LH website, and they replied with apologies –

yes you are right.We are very sorry about that fault. We do not remember about that possibility, because we don not had this very often. We send you a confirmation for the requested day use room free of charge as a first class member. Please be so kind and send us a copy of the ticket and also bring along the original one for check in.

Nice, a free dayroom with complimentary airport pickup and dropoff.

They pick up from Terminal 1 Exit A1 and C8 and Terminal 2, between Exit D and E. You have to ring them, though, using the hotel call stand, and they dispatch someone to the airport. Traffic was especially bad and it took a full 40 minutes for them to arrive; not especially enjoyable in the early morning cold with just a sport jacket.

Check-in was a breeze, they didn’t even ask for a credit card against room charges. They gave us our key, and it was off to bed immediately. Having both worked a full day before (and several really crazy weeks) we were too tired to do anything but crash. We both slept a solid 5 hours, got up and freshened up, and let the hotel know we’d be returning to the airport at 4pm.

They had the hotel van ready to take us, asked us which terminal we’d be going to, and when I told them “First Class Terminal” they changed their mind and put us into a waiting BMW instead.