Hilton Frankfurt Airport: Pretty Good with Kids and Families

The Hilton Frankfurt Airport on the surface appears like most other airport hotels, but our kids had a pretty good time here.

Entrance to the Hilton Frankfurt Airport

Booking the Hilton Frankfurt Airport Hotel

Official link to hotel: https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/frahahi-hilton-frankfurt-airport/

For this stay, I needed a night near Frankfurt Airport. We weren’t looking to go into the city since we weren’t getting in until late in the afternoon. I originally had the Hyatt Place Frankfurt booked but was looking for something ideally attached to the airport. After all, I wanted something easy on this quick layover to not stress our Jenn or the kids. This narrowed me down to the Sheraton, Marriott, Hilton, and Hilton Garden Inn.

Of the options. the Hilton Frankfurt Airport had decent-priced family rooms available. Of course, upgrading to anything other than the base room in Hilton’s program means paying astronomically-high points rates. So, I ended up paying cash. Rather than booking direct, I booked via Delta Stays, which gave me a chance to use up my $150 credit that my Delta Platinum credit card gave. Thus, rather than paying $443 for the night, I instead paid $293 after the credit. Not cheap but I’ll take the discount when available.

And as more credit cards impose a minimum of two nights to redeem these hotel credits, I appreciate that the Delta cards do not have that restriction (yet).

Earning Hilton points

Full disclosure: there are no referral links in this section. The cards we present below are publicly available and we earn no commission from them.

If all you want is Hilton Gold status, your cheapest option is the Hilton Surpass card. At just a $150 annual fee, it can be a helpful card to have if you visit Hilton hotels with some frequency. The 130,000 Hilton points as a sign-up bonus is icing on the cake for that first year.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, American Express Membership Rewards (MR) cards transfer points at a 1:2 ratio. That means you’ll get 2,000 Hilton points for every 1,000 MR points you transfer. But in a pinch, if you need more points, that can be an option, but it’s an expensive option.

Why? Because Hilton very frequently sells points at a rate of 0.5 cents each and the points are worth 0.4 cents each. Using Amex MR for such an inefficient option isn’t really something we want to promote.

First impressions of the Hilton Frankfurt Airport Hotel

Can we just say it up front? Frankfurt Airport (FRA) is not an easy-to-traverse airport for passengers. If you need to connect, be prepared for convoluted paths, potential construction, and what feels like going the wrong way at times. We got off our flight from Iceland (via Copenhagen) and then had to follow the signs to Terminal 1.

For us, that meant going up and down a few different sets of escalators and taking a tram to the other terminal.

Once in Terminal 1, you might think you’re in the clear, but unfortunately, sometimes the “Hotels” sign didn’t take us the right way. However, I’m more inclined to blame it on the construction in the area.

Eventually, we found this escalator, which took us up to the right area. Honestly, rather than follow the signs for “Hilton” or “Hotels”, you might want to follow the signs for “Long-distance trains”. They will all take you to the same area.

And then when in the train station attached to the airport, we immediately recognized the terminal. This is the same train station we departed from when going to Hamburg.

The lobby of the Hilton Frankfurt Airport feels very open with its tall ceiling that extends as high as the hotel is. With hardly any other hotel guests around when we checked in, service was pretty quick. The agent informed us that the family room we had booked was simply just two connecting rooms and handed us the room keys for both rooms.

Front desk of the Hilton Frankfurt Airport

The rooms

Our rooms for this stay were 7115 and 7117. A clear door somewhat oddly separated the doors (the clear doors are meant to welcome you down the hallway to the right).

Bedroom #1 (7115)

We’ll start with the bedroom with the 1-king setup. This room had plenty of lighting, including some that was hidden behind the headboard making it easy on the eyes.

This bed was comfortable enough for us–not too soft nor too firm. However, personally I prefer the pillows to be a bit firmer. There also was a lack of electrical outlets by the bed. But otherwise no major gripes here from us.

Across from the bed was a desk, a small round table, the TV, and a couple of chairs. It’s probably obvious but these tables aren’t good for using optical mice.

Next to the bed is a large closet, a cabinet, and the in-room coffee setup.

Inside the cabinet is a mini-fridge. This one looks like it was once used as a minibar, but is completely empty.

The room also had some free water but only for those with elite status. I have Gold status with Hilton but because I didn’t book directly, I wouldn’t get it for free. Frankly, €5.50 for a small bottle of water feels a bit egregious if you ask me–even if it’s a required buy-one-get-one free arrangement.

The view from the room was of the countryside. There are no views of any kind from this particular room.

Bedroom #2 (7117)

The room layout is almost completely identical–just mirrored–with one exception. This room has two twin beds. The kids enjoyed getting their own beds though they somehow still managed to find their way over to us in the middle of the night.

Speaking of them coming over in the middle night, the rooms have connecting doors as you might expect but they’re incredibly inconvenient. Sure, you have to open them on both sides to walk between them. But what makes them a poor design?

First of all, one of the connecting doors appears to be on this track that automatically closes the door when left open. I’m not sure why that’s only on one of the two doors or why it exists. To keep it open, we had to prop open the door with a stool. If the door closes, there’s no way to open it from the other side.

Propping it open meant we would accidentally run into it with some frequency. The other problem is just how in-the-way the doors are. It’s not like the hallway is all that wide. If the doors opened the opposite way, it might obstruct some of the TV but at least the doors wouldn’t be as in the way.

One last note about the other room. The water in this room was priced at €6. Why is it €0.50 more over here? You got me. Maybe they’re testing to see what the buy price is?

Bathrooms

Both bathrooms are identical, so we’ll just focus on one. Each bathroom had both a standing shower and a bathtub, which is good to have in rooms billed as family rooms. One downside of the standing shower is that the glass enclosure had no door. But on the good side, both the shower pressure and water temperature were excellent. The temperature was so warm that it helped compensate for the lack of a door.

The bathtub is pretty standard, but one thing I wish hotels would get better is the drainage system. Why does it always feel like the drain doesn’t work or the stopper gets in the way?

The shower amenities are Crabtree & Evelyn, the standard for Hilton hotels. It’s fine enough.

Dining options at the Hilton Frankfurt Airport

Rise

Hours:

Breakfast: 6AM to 10AM (weekdays), 6AM to 10:30AM (weekends)
Dinner: 6PM to 10:30PM daily

Rise is the hotel’s full-service restaurant. From the looks of it, the setting is a bit on the fancier side (especially in comparison to the hotel bar, the other dining option).

We looked at the dinner menu, but we have to admit it didn’t strike our fancy. I get hotel restaurants can be overpriced but €36.50 for some fish and chips was a bit much. We ultimately didn’t dine here.

The FIFTH, Lounge & Bar

Hours:

Weekdays: 9AM to 12AM daily
Weekends: 3PM to 12PM daily

The bar is right in the lobby, directly across from the check-in desk. Unlike Rise, this one had a more casual vibe with plenty of TVs scattered about and some dining specials.

The menu was what you would expect from a bar: burgers, beer, and plenty of small bites. They also had pizza and some “guilty pleasures” (desserts).

Drinks

Since Alex was in the mood for a pizza, there was a deal where I could save €0.50 on the purchase of a pizza by adding this monstrous beer. I guess it pays to drink beer in Germany! The kids ordered some juice and Jenn ordered a glass of cider.

Wings

As we were at a bar, it’s only natural to add in some chicken wings. They were flavorful and came with some BBQ dipping sauce. It looks a little barren on the plate simply because the plate is a bit too long but they hit the spot. It’s everything you’d expect a plate of wings to be.

Pizza Salame

Because Alex loves to eat meat, he wanted the salami pizza, which was adequate. It’s not going to win any awards but it meets that craving if you’re looking for a pizza. The salami is flavorful and so are the olives. He was pretty satisfied with the pizza, which is all that matters.

Currywurst

When in Germany, I always feel the need to get some currywurst. You can insert your wurst joke here, but I’ll stick to positive adjectives. This version has plenty of flavor. I wish it had some sauce for dipping (perhaps some senf) but it works. It’s all part of a healthy German diet, right? A plate full of sausage and fries can’t be bad for you when you’re visiting Frankfurt.

Easter egg hunt in your room

You’ll notice by the title that we found this hotel to be pretty awesome for kids. Why? Well, we were here over the Easter weekend. During that weekend, the Hilton had a little game whereby they would hide eggs all throughout the hotel. Any child finding an egg can turn it in to get a prize. Our kids saw the advertisement at the front desk when checking in and got excited.

Sure enough, there were plastic eggs hidden in our room–a total of four eggs across the two rooms. Some examples of where they were hidden include the ice bucket…

…between the pillows…

…and in the corners of the room.

Needless to say, they were pretty excited to have found the eggs.

The kids even found some in the lobby. They returned to the front desk where a friendly employee offered to trade them 1:1 for a chocolate egg. That feels more generous than the average points transfer ratio these days.

Trading in the plastic egg for a chocolate egg

One of the managers was so enthralled with the enthusiasm that our kids showed that she took some pictures of them posing. When chatting with her, sounds like they’re trying to do more events like these to spread joy to kids and families. Pretty neat! If you ever happen to see our kids in any marketing, let us know!

Small area for children

The holiday events aren’t the only thing for kids here at the hotel. If you have younger children, you might also appreciate this setup in the lobby. There are a number of Duplos and other toys that kids can play with. Our six-year-old daughter Char still feels the need to play with practically any toy she comes across. Kids will be kids, I suppose.

Recommendation: Yes, if traveling with a family

Naturally, the Hilton Frankfurt Airport is good if you need an overnight rest at the airport. The hardware of the hotel itself is pretty standard and by that measure it doesn’t stand out much from other airport hotels (positively or negatively). However, on the soft product side, there are clear reasons to choose this hotel.

Service is excellent at all levels
There is a greater focus on families, especially those with younger children

Thus, we’d skew towards saying we recommend this hotel to others if they’re bringing children along for the ride. The staff did their best to make us feel right at home and we think that would apply even outside of a holiday weekend.

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