I arrived around midnight checked in the room 304. Naturally I went to the 3rd floor to find the room, but there were only 301, 302 and 303 over there. So I came down and asked the front desk. It turned out that I had to go to the 2nd floor and then take a small staircase to go to a 3rd floor corridor under the attic to get to another attached section of the building which contained 304, 305 and other rooms. Odd, isn’t it? No elevator access to the room and I had to go through a claustrophobic hallway and pass a small service door to get to the room. I also noticed that there was no door to separate the shower or the bathroom from the room. So nothing to stop all the moisture and odor to get to the room. still not a deal breaker. Anyway, I went out for a quick bar hopping and came back at about 2 am super tired to crash in my bed. But the room was way too hot. around 30 C (85F). I tried to lower the temp on the AC controller on the wall but It didn’t work. So I thought to give the front desk a call. To my surprise there was NO PHONE in the room! So I had to go down through the narrow hallway and staircase and all that jazz to get to the front desk. The guy at the front desk told me that they intentionally disabled the room temperature control because some guest abused the system (what?!) and he had to set the temp for my room himself. So he did that. He also told me to use my cellphone or to use what’s app on my phone to call the front desk. I went back to the room, and unfortunately the room was still hot. No change whatsoever. I couldn’t successfully add them to what’s app either, so I just called them on my cell phone, which would cost me international roaming charges (from US to Europe). The guy said the AC seems to be broken. I requested to change room to one of the lower levels hoping those would be cool. Note that my trip was in September, the outside temperature was very chill (around 10 degree Celsius) but my room had no window to open and somehow it was oddly hot, perhaps because it was just under the attic or some other reason like that. The front desk told me that the other rooms are occupied and he offered to give me a fan instead. I accepted, but then a few minutes later he called me and said that they don’t have any fan, but he can put me in room 305. Fortunately room 305 had a window which I could open to keep the room cool, however I had to leave the curtains open all night. Long story short, it took me from 2 am to 3:30 am to get to bed and finally get some shut eye until the bright daylight woke me up at about 6:30 am and gave me a bad headache.
This was my first night experience in this supposedly fancy hotel which costed me $160 a night off-season. I got only 3 hours of sleep and a bad headache.
No working AC, No elevator access, No phone to call the front desk, No bathroom door.
The room 305 also didn’t have any phone in it, but its bathroom did have a door.
The next day I talked to some of the other guests at the hotel and they also had problems with the AC. In my opinion a hotel that doesn’t have a working AC should not be allowed to operate; period.
This first night struggle not only ruined the hotel experience for me, but also ruined my Belgium experience.
