kfusto

Just a comment about hrs.de as I have seen them recommended often on this forum. They may indeed be very reputable but I have never found them to have the best price, or even close to it.

hsv

"They may indeed be very reputable but I have never found them to have the best price, or even close to it."

Which is why I recommended them primarily as a tool to get a quick overview over the market. In my experience their rates are never far off the cheapest you can find and normally are roughly in line with what one could book through the respective hotel's website. There may be exceptions, but due to the condensed display on the site, one can get at least a rough overview. Once having identified suitable options, one can still shop around.

margot55

I actually have been using tripadvisor to do pretty much the same thing that the website you recommend does, and I keep coming back to the Mercure at Checkpoint Charlie, which gets a 98% positive rating from its guests. I can get a room there for $255/night, breakfast excluded. The Adlon Kempinski also scores well for about $20 more per night. I have been checking hotwire as well...hsv, I know you were steering me away from the Mercure and was wondering what you can tell me about it???

DAX

Margot, the Mercure is a middle class hotel collection of the Accor hotel chain which also owns Motel 6 in the US. It's usually a good value hotel but nothing exciting. It's almost unthinkable that the Adlon is only a 22 dolars more per night, granted that you will probably get the smallest room of the hotel. I'd still pick the Adlon over the Mercure anytime any day just to get the proper Berlin ambiance. The Checkpoint Charlie area is not as nice/prominent as the area around the premiere hotel Adlon. The street in front of the Adlon is called Unter den Linden and it is the famous grand boulevard of Berlin as the Champs Elysees is the famous grand blvd of Paris. It is a stone's throw away from the Brandenburg gate, the landmark Holocaust Memorial & Friedrichstr shopping.

hsv

I don't really know the Mercure at Checkpoint Charlie, so cannot comment on the particular property.
However, as DAX outlined, Mercure is a brand of French hotel giant Accor. Apart from some very nice Sofitels, Accor generally are experts in setting up very generic, but reliable hotels. Mercure is probably their 4th tier brand, with Sofitel for luxury at the top, followed by Pullman (new 4* brand), M-Gallery (some conservative hotels that were not good enough to make it into the Pullman brand), then Mercure - and below that Novotel, Ibis, Formule1. Mercure about best compares to a better Holiday Inn.
The essence is, as DAX outlined, a Mercure doesn't really compare to the Adlon - and a USD 22 price difference would be a strong indication that the Adlon is offering a great rate, whereas the Mercure is probably offering just an ordinary rate.
I also agree that the immediate surroundings of Checkpoint Chralie at the Mercure are much more touristy and slightly tacky compared to the Adlon's more prominent location on Unter den Linden.