This hotel is a disaster. We checked in around 8pm - way later than the regular check in time of 2pm. You'd expect the rooms to be ready at this point. With just one person at the front desk and one person to help with coffee/ tea luggage and everything, you should be prepared to lug along your bags yourself. After a 10 min wait for coffee which we never got since the boy making the coffee cut his hand in the process (the worst part about this was the hotel's lack of preparedness - they were offering him cellotape for the bleeding. We had to give him a band aid. Given this situation, we luggage d our baggage along by ourselves over a bunch of stairs, elevator and then another bunch of stairs only to enter an absolutely disgusting room down a dingy alley. The room was filled with stains all over, the linen unclean - gross to stay the least. Maybe the hotel wanted to give its guests a heritage feel of staying in rooms that hadn't been cleaned since the byzantine era. We then went back to the reception and complained and asked for alternative rooms. We were provided the option of two extremely small rooms despite having paid more for larger rooms. At this point it was close to 9pm. Tired and hungry, we took these rooms. We lugged along our luggage all over again, unpacked a bit and discovered that these rooms hadn't been properly cleaned either. We found hair from the previous occupant on the bed linen, half empty shampoo bottles. At this point we were too tired to change the room again. We went back to the reception when stepping out for dinner and asked for the room to be cleaned properly. You can hazard a guess on whether that happened. The next morning we sought to speak to the manager. While the management staff were courteous, we felt a bit insulted when the manager offered to change our room to their other hotel close by with a "larger room with bathtub where you can relax. Having ruined a lot of our limited time in the city, it was obnoxious to think we would want to waste time shifting room again, to relax in a bathtub! they also offered to clean our room properly and leave "some gifts. Given that we had paid for a much larger room and the stress we went through, we wanted a refund of the difference which the hotel refused. After some conversations they finally agreed to cover our airport transfer vehicle. And did leave a nice platter of nuts in the room. While located a few 100 meters from istiklal avenue, there are several other options for accommodation that i would prefer the next time. The least that i expect is a clean hotel room. A hotel fails on all fronts for me if that basic is not met. Definitely not worth the price either.
