The Radisson Blu hotel in Basel has the potential to be a five-star hotel just a short walk from the train station or the center of the city. I really want to love this hotel for its facilities: esprcislly a nice wellness center, pool and good restaurant. However, the problems with staff training and adequate staffing are so bad that its service is on the level of a two-star hotel. Thus making this hotel, in my estimation an adequate, but over-priced, three-star hotel. The outside of the hotel is anything fancy just the normal unremarkable Protestant Germanic flavor. The inside is tastefully decorated with ample like by seating at street level. Check-in was painless, although nothing special. The receptionists seemed friendly and helpful at check-in and even gave us a large room, but see the comments on staffing problems below. There were also non-alcoholic drinks, small candies, and small cookies available in the reception area. There's ample sitting in the reception area and there's a table of which few people can work. The reception area also opens into the meeting area that has its own coffee and tea corner, bathrooms, and up to eight meeting rooms. The meeting roons can hold between 25 and 300 people depending how they are configured and combined. Unfortunately, some of the public areas of the hotel didn't look very clean. One lobby table looked like somebody had left food and spilled something on it and hadn't been clean. Staff did not even seem to notice the mess in the 30 minutes we waited in our in the lobby to get our room. The best part of the hotel is the wellness center. There is a nice swimming pool, steam room, and sauna. The gym is small for a hotel this size, but we kept. It is a little problematic that the wellness facilities were often crowded by outside members who have long-term memberships for it, but it remained manageable. The breakfast was very good and equal to other four star hotels in Basel. The restaurant was also reasonable both in price and food. The food was not special, but hearty and good. Everything, including salad seemed fresh. Fare is somewhat limited but burger special, although somewhat pricey was tasty. The rooms are large, but not very functional. The telephone did not work. It was fixed the next day after we reported it. The coffee machine only worked after we cleaned it by running water through it. The radiators did not work, although the room temperature was kept satificatory by circulating air. The curtains were torn from the hangers that were broken. The desk lamp did not work properly and had to be unplugged to turn it off. The clothes hanging line in the bathroom fell of the wall crashing into the bathtub when it was lightly to touched, but was also fixed after we reported it. The maintenance seemed to have much to desire. Getting room service was a joke. Because the phone did not work we had to call the reservation number. When we did they could not connect us to the hotel. Then the reservation center gave us a number to call that was wrong. After more than thirty minutes we finally found a way to contact the hotel. In other words, as a lawyer whose time is worth quite alot, I lost more than the total cost of my full three-day reservation in time waste ordering one room service meal. Despite a painless check-in reception staff were generally very poorly trained. First, they messed up our reservation on arrival, not being able to find it. Admittedly we had made two reservations as we were not able to extend our original reservation on the website. Second, when we check out they double charged us for two nights, almost $600 USD. Perhaps we should have used the automatic check-in that is offered. Despite seeing it was a double charge, even agreeing it was, they refused to reverse the charge. Only after we threatened to report the matter as fraud did they agree to refund the double charge saying it wasn't fraud but a mistake. Arguing incompetence instead of intentional malfeasance isn't a very good defense for a hotel. Some senior staff seemed to know their job much better, but since there are also few of them it's likely that as a guest you'll deal with one of the poorly trained staff. The manager who came to the rescue of the floundering check-out receptionist seemed.quite competent. However, it does not speak well for an hotel when only their managers seem to know how to act professionally. In fact, so much of the staff, from receptionists to cleaners, need significant training. In addition, they need to ensure proper staffing. The hotel appeared woefully understaffed. In more than 10,000 hotel stays the staffing at the Radisson Blu hotel in Basel is among the worst in terms of competent service. This is a nice hotel, but not one for business travellers who are in a hurry. From my experience, chances are high that could be ripped off or suffer an injury due to the poor staff quality and poor maintenance. Please be extremely vigilant if you stay at this hotel. Read my detailed reviews in World Traveller