XO Hotels City Centre

XO Hotels City Centre is a good budget option in a central location (which can be difficult to find in an expensive city like Amsterdam). The hotel is located very near Dam square, just behind the Damrak avenue and canal. This is right next to the red light district, with its many gay bars and shops – Dirty Dicks, an Amsterdam gay fetish institution, is just around the block, as is Eagle, which hosts many regular gay club nights.

The hotel itself is, as you can expect, pretty basic. The decor isn’t particularly modern but the rooms are comfortable. The single and double rooms tend to be quite compact, but the triple and quadruple rooms are especially spacious, and handy for a group of friends on a budget – depending on the time of the year, a group of four could sleep here for similar rates than a hostel dorm room.

Do note that this hotel is renovating its exterior until June 2019, with works planned during the day (8:30 am to 4 pm) on weekends. This shouldn’t be a problem for most guests, but if you like to sleep in on a weekend (for example, after a big night out in the red light district) then this might not be ideal for you.