Congress Hotel

This hotel is strategically located by the main Vienna train station (the Vienna Hauptbahnhof) and close to the city underground subway. This is convenient, but it's a rather gritty area - at night we had the window open (more on that below) and heard a guy yelling incoherently for a very long time. It's safe, but not lovely in the area. The hotel itself is in pretty poor condition. The staff were nice. The rooms and hallways are badly in need of spackle and paint. The room layouts are rather odd. And, this being Europe, there's no air conditioning. So in summer it can get really hot and the only relief is a tiny provided fan and having the window open - which leads to a lot of noise from cars and crazy people. Breakfast is not included - it's EUR 19 per person for the breakfast buffet. This is an adequate place if you're staying in Vienna for one night, and want to be near the train station. But if you're actually staying in Vienna for 2+ days, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.

Functional hotel but without air conditioning

We picked this hotel because the location ( across from the central station and metro station at the corner) and had real beds （ not sofa bed) for all three of us. Angelo checked us in and he was friendly and helpful, he even recommended a pretty nice restaurant around the corner. Our room 411 was spacious and the windows can blocked off 85% of the noise from the outside ( we facing the central station and street). The chairs n the room were little flimsy （IKEA chairs ?), but the beds were comfortable. The previous complaints about the shower were correct, the water temperature was inconsistent , the shower rod was loose , the shower was small, and the caulking of the shower doors were loose （ they fixed the caulking after I advised the front desk of leaking water to the bathroom floor.). We are lucky the 4 nights we stayed the temperature was cool , we were able to close the windows to sleep ( no air condition at this hotel), else, the noise will be tough to bear from the outside. Final note, location was good, we were able to do a day trip to Budapest and to our last stop of Munich from central station without any Uber ride.