AX Imperial Suítes

A warning for anyone reading these reviews: be very careful when booking. I booked directly from the flat owner without realizing that the hotel administrators wouldn’t assist me at all. For every issue, they told me to contact the owner. I stayed a week, but nothing was fixed: there was no TV, the air conditioning worked poorly, and the bathroom leaked into the bedroom. The listing promised a full kitchen, but there wasn’t even a spoon. When I asked to change rooms, they said that wasn’t possible because of the way I’d booked.

The terrace, hall and other amenities were excellent. We stayed in two rooms, both with en-suite bathrooms, and all that humidity ended up in the bedrooms. It was incredibly damp, and with no exhaust fans, the air conditioning couldn’t dry the walls, which were dripping.

There are two separate choices in the same building: Nobile Hotel, an older, mid-sized family hotel that’s decent but noisy, with lots of children on weekends, and Imperial Suites, privately owned apartments that are badly neglected. Imperial is for guests with very low expectations. The apartments get cleaned every two days, and hotel staff deal with a steady stream of problems because the units are so run down and haven’t been renovated in decades. A faucet might be broken, a mattress dirty and wobbly, soaked in urine with springs nearly poking through, or towels and sheets so threadbare and old they should be thrown away. There might be a rusty old fridge, a loose toilet seat, a wall lamp falling to the floor, a bad smell in the room, or water dripping from the ceiling. The maids do what they can, but there’s no making up for how old the apartments are. The rooms face the back of the hotel or an alley, despite the building being on the seafront. If you can pay a little more, stay somewhere else. Anyone with any stomach for it should forget Imperial. It’s rubbish that they charge for in advance, and the Health Department should have closed it down.

There were several problems in the apartment. The air conditioner had no temperature control, then water started running down the wall and we had to turn it off. The TV and hair dryer didn’t work either. The apartment owner never replied to our messages, while the hotel staff said they couldn’t fix anything because it was a privately owned unit. I don’t recommend it.