We have planned on spending 9 nights at the NCounter Business Center in Cluj-Napoca. For both a business and vacation trip. It turned out to be just one!!
This is neither a hotel nor a business center - at least not yet...
Starting with the pick-up service from the airport - it is not free. Not that we had a problem to pay the small amount for it (taxis are very cheap in RO), but then please state that it has to be paid!!! As we didn't have romanian money yet, they put the taxi drive on the invoice - a plus here.
The surroundings have been more than uncomfortable. Building sites, poor streets, not as close to the city as stated on the site. Actually way off!!
One has to admit that all over Cluj they are re-building, renovating or setting up everything new - which is a blessing for the city and its residents - but PLEASE do tell that it is right in front of the hotel!!! The pics of the hotel are nicer than in reality. When asking about a banc, we were told some 300 m down the street. Turned out to be a lot more than that....talking about 2 km at least.
The room we had was on 3rd floor. No elevator unfortunately. The stairs are of different height, so be careful there.
The room itself was large and air-conditioned. It had a small balcony as well, but due to the water coming out of the air-conditioning it could not be used - we are talking about a small flooding as there was no drain there. What would have happend if we stayed more than one night??
The non-smoking policy is obviously not really an issue here, unfortunately. We have been using the air-conditioning most of the time while in the room. Everything seemed a lot older than stated on the internet site.
The bathroom was large enough. We had a problem with the bathroom-door though. It got stuck after closing it the first time in the morning - the door-latch fell off taking a piece of wood with it - absolutely TERRIBLE!! After a close look at everything we found out, that not only somebody else before us must have been forcing this door open a few times but also the complete door latch and lock etc (made of steel) were bended a few times and poorly repaired. Thus we were the unlucky ones to use the bathroom door next... What an experience!! Instead of helping us out with this, we were being told that a carpenter will have to renew the complete door frame and we were expected to pay all of it.
I will not go into further details, but we decided to check out and look for a new hotel. Not to mention the hotel policies about paying half of your stay because we checked out earlier...
We are spending a lot of time in Romania, we visit at least twice a year for 2-3 weeks as I am from Sibiu myself. It is hard to get started, to set up everything new etc. and we don't want this to sound snobbish. We know how hard it is to meet the "western" expectations, but no matter where we went, the hospitality and the friendliness were always first and unsurpassed. Unfortunately not at the NCounter Business Center. We have never met such uppish personell. We felt very uncomfortable there! This is not a way to attract more guests.
