Luxembourg is an eternal building site. It reminds me a bit of Dubai, in the sense that everytime you visit, there’s a new building that wasn’t there the last time. A fairly new addition is the Moxy Hotel at Findel Airport. You can actually see the hotel from the aircraft as you taxi in.

Getting to the Hotel

The set up at Luxembourg airport is convenient. To access the hotel, head one floor up from arrivals to departures. Then exit the terminal and make a left turn. Walk two minutes and you’re standing in front of the main entrance to the hotel building.

Reception

The hotel is a bit of an oddity, mainly because it looks as though it’s not quite finished yet. Obviously, there are some parts that really aren’t ready yet. However, the hotel uses a lot of, what looks like, unvarnished wood paneling, which has you wondering if this is already the final look or just a temporary solution.

The reception sits at one end of a long bar counter, next to a small lobby area. To be honest, my impression is that they’re trying to copy the CitizenM style, but doing a really bad job of it. The furniture is not particularly nice, some of it is just plain ugly and most of it is rather uncomfortable. Alas, service is not something they do well in Luxembourg. Which doesn’t really help to explain why it takes the receptionist twenty minutes to check in the guy in front of me. It takes about the same time for her to check me in next.

Moxy Curve Room

I have booked a room grandly designated as a Moxy Curve airport view room, which is, frankly, utterly impractical unless you’re only staying for one night or so. There is no storage space, and there are just two hangers for clothes. There is a small desk, but that’s hardly wide enough to place a laptop on it, especially if you’re using the desk for your unpacked clothes. Perhaps the most useless item of furniture in the room is a bean bag. I can feel the discs in my spine popping just from looking at it…

The bed is a good size, though, and the mattress has a very pleasant firmness to it.

The washroom is rather small and not very well designed. For example the toilet is so close to the sink that it’s impossible to sit on the loo straight. The shower doesn’t flood, but the stream of water is somewhat unpredictable and varies between scalding and freezing. The cosmetics are Moxy branded and smell rather nice.

But the view? Now, the view from my room, that’s really something else. In fact, I dare say the view alone can compensate for the rather useless service and the crappy room!

Dining

The dining area is located on the first floor, in front of reception. It is a large room facing the apron. The view is excellent, but not as nice as from my room on the fifth floor. Breakfast at the Moxy is a self-service buffet. There is a rather nice selection of items to choose from, including hot and cold, sweet and savoury dishes. Especially the crushed avocado in oil is quite tasty with a slice of mozzarella. During the day, it is also possible to order food, although it’s mostly fast food snacks like hamburgers, from what I can tell.

Conclusion

The Moxy’s location is certainly its best selling point. That, and the spectacular airport views from the Moxy Curve Room. But that’s just about it. The rooms are highly impractical and the whole hotel is just very ugly. With the Moxy brand, Marriott was obviously trying to emulate the look and feel of the CitizenM hotels. They missed by a wide margin. Where the CitizenM hotels are decked out in stylish, high quality furniture by Vitra Design, the Moxy Luxembourg is decked out in very ugly, cheap, and surprisingly uncomfortable furniture that probably even IKEA would be too embarrassed to ask money for. In the meantime, Marriott has bought the CitizenM chain, and it’ll be interesting to see how they integrate them into their portfolio