This hotel is huge and much more of a conference facility than a standard hotel. We stayed on 10TH floor (concierge level) in the new(er) building. The room was at the very end of the corridor. As soon as we opened the door to our room we were struck by a very strong odor that smelled like car exhaust. We contacted the front desk and they immediately assigned us a new room.
The second room seemed fine, if a bit small. However on our first night the smoke alarm directly over the bed went off at 4 am. After being shocked awake, we had to clamor around to locate, reach, and finally remove the alarm to get it to stop. We didn’t report it right away as we didn’t want repair people in the room at that hour. After trying unsuccessfully to fall back to sleep we decided to turn on TV to watch early morning news. The TV did not work! Getting more frustrated by the minute, we picked up the phone by the bed to report the problems, and the phone did not work!! Not a good start to our stay.
I will say that once we spoke with someone at the desk they were very responsive and an engineer came to the room very quickly and fixed the fire alarm & TV. They thought they fixed the phone, but it never did work. That wasn’t a problem, since there was another phone in the room.
Overall the overnight rooms are a bit tired but clean. The bath is small. There was some mold on shower curtain, but I left a note and housekeeping replaced it. The bath towels were pretty thin, but they did leave a sufficient supply of bath linens each day. Since this is a very large conference hotel, I am surprised there was no makeup mirror. Wireless was OK, but I did have to sign on several times even though we had signed up to have wireless for our whole stay.
Now for the good. The bed was comfortable and double sheeted (although blanket was extremely thin). Room also had a small refrigerator. The breakfast in the concierge lounge was excellent with lots of healthy options including fresh fruit (with various types of berries, melon, oranges, etc), cold cereals, yogurt, oatmeal, hot dish was scrambled eggs. Was very happy one morning to see smoked salmon complete with capers, chopped onions and tomatoes. Cookies and cold drinks were available all day. Appreciated that evening snack was also fresh and healthy: veggies, hummus, tzatziki dip, edamame bean salad, and lentil salad. Concierge lounge has computer & printer that we used (free) for boarding passes; I understand the business center in the lobby charges even to print boarding passes. Housekeeping did a good job and both housekeeping and concierge lounge staff were unfailingly cordial and polite. The food in the bar/lounge off the lobby was surprisingly good and very reasonably priced. We ate there twice for lunch and it was excellent. Another positive was that although the hotel is huge, we never waited more than a minute or two for the elevator.
Overall, the rooms are average, and a bit smaller than most Marriotts at which we’ve stayed. Both the service and the location are excellent. The hotel is very close to zoo, abuts a nice residential area and is within walking distance of restaurants and parks. The metro stop is right in front of the hotel and the metro system is very easy to navigate. The hotel is so large that there are always taxi cabs available right at the hotel entrance. I would probably stay again, but only if I was attending a conference at the hotel, and could stay again on concierge floor.
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