Elegance East Hotel

Overall, this place seems like it once was an elegant hotel but has been worn out for a while now. It is probably still better than many other budget hotels, but it is clearly overpriced, and for those kinds of prices, you could definitely find something better.

Here is a longer explanation of our experience. We booked a standard room, but on arrival, we were given an economy room which had really sad vibes (maybe because it was really damp and looked like a basement with worn-out furniture). Although it is not very clear which room is which, as they sell the same room with pictures of very different rooms and many different rooms have the same pictures. In any case, we were given the worst room and told the whole hotel was sold out for the night (although it still showed rooms available when trying to make a new booking through Agoda). We were told to ask again the next day if a room change was possible; during the first night, it was hard to sleep because you could hear every conversation going on in reception.

The next day, we were shown a different room (something that looked a lot more like the room picture we saw on the booking). At first, I was told that we could change rooms for free, so I was pleasantly surprised for a moment, but when we got back to reception, the boss told us that we had to pay extra for that upgrade. Leaving that aside, we were happy with the new room as it was much better than the first room. But you could still clearly see what is hidden in the pictures: that everything there is worn out and has not seen renovations for a long time.

Both rooms seemed to have paper-thin walls as you could hear everything just as if you were outside. Luckily, the second room had a better location, so not that much talking was going on late at night or early in the morning.

Breakfast was average and there was not too much variety, so probably 3–4 nights is the max stay if you don't want to get fed up with eating exactly the same things every morning. What was also surprising was the quality of the coffee in the morning; it tasted very, very diluted, while at the same time, ordering coffee from the bar (for 5 euros), you get very good coffee.

The only parts of the hotel that seemed more or less as expected were the general areas and pool. Also, staff were generally welcoming, friendly, and helpful (if we disregard the situation with the room switching at the beginning).

My 11 y.o. son and I stayed for 9 nights. The location is perfect. But while the hotel itself, the pool and restaurant area etc. are absolutely stunning and very clean, the rooms are extremely small and there’s very limited space for storing clothes, suitcases etc. Furthermore, our room was not even cleaned once during our stay, not even emptying rubbish bins, and we had to ask for toilet paper etc. We also ran out of hand soap. The worst experience we had however, was in the restaurant. The waiter did not speak any English and my son and I ordered burgers. We had to use Google translate on the initiative of the waiter. Even before the order arrived I felt really uncomfortable as I was afraid he would get the order wrong. In the end, we each received 2 giant burgers and double portions of fries. We lost our appetite, because we were stressed out by the mistake and hardly ate any of it. Of course a 55 kg woman and an 11 y.o. can’t eat 4 huge burgers and 4 portions of fries, and although you cannot expect everybody to speak English, even in a hotel in a large city, the waiter should definitely have asked another waiter (other waiters did speak English), before placing such a huge order for two small people. Especially when we do obviously had problems understanding each other. We were charged the full amount with no real apology. This kind of ruined our stay at the hotel, to be honest.

Our stay at the hotel was very enjoyable. It is not too large, which gives it a cozy and intimate atmosphere, yet everything is maintained at a very high standard. The staff were friendly and helpful, the breakfasts were delicious with a wide variety of options, the rooms were air-conditioned, and everything was clean with fresh towels provided daily. I would gladly visit again and would highly recommend this hotel to my family, friends, and others as well.