DEM Hotel Jerusalem

There were only ten rooms, and the place felt more like a guesthouse or hostel than a proper hotel. Our “luxury double” was still tiny, and the bed was two twin beds pushed together, not a queen. The room was clean and we got fresh towels each day, but we had no hot water for two days straight. Cigarette smoke came into our room from next door. We told the staff, but they didn’t intervene. The woman said it was impossible, yet didn’t even go down the hall to check. Smoking indoors is illegal in Israel, so I don’t understand why they wouldn’t look into it. The walls were very thin. One night we heard people across the hall having loud sex, and on other nights guests blasted music and sang at the top of their lungs. You could hear people making coffee in the common area, or reception chatting when someone was there. Also, staff are off duty from Friday afternoon until Saturday night for the Sabbath.

This “hotel” turned out to be rooms on one floor of an office building. It was tiny and dirty, and there’s no elevator or 24-hour staff. We arrived at 2am after our tour from Jordan and couldn’t have got in without a phone. Once we called, they gave us the door code. We called right away to cancel the remaining nights. If it hadn’t been 2am, we wouldn’t have stayed even one night. I took pictures of how gross the place was. At 7am, someone knocked intensely on the door. The woman, who might have been the owner or manager, said we had to leave immediately if we canceled the other nights, even though we’d paid for at least the first one. We packed quickly and moved hotels. Based on other reviews, we had booked this place. Run, don’t stay here.

I travel a lot, and this was one of my worst hotel experiences. I’d emailed four times to ask whether arriving late at night would be a problem. Three emails got no reply, and the fourth said it would be fine. But when we reached the hotel at 3:30am, there was nobody there. We found an email sent at midnight, while we were on our plane, saying our booking had been canceled because we hadn’t shown up. We were exhausted and stranded in a foreign country we’d never visited. We called about 30 times and have still had no reply. Every other hotel we looked at was full, so we didn’t sleep at all that day. This was over a month ago, and we still haven’t received our prepaid money for the night or any other compensation. Completely unprofessional. Do not stay there.

I barely slept and felt worn out the whole stay. The walls let through everything, from alarms to people talking, and we were woken at 6 a.m. by someone having sex in the room next to ours. The room was dirty and smelled bad, the bathroom was covered in rust, and there was a blood stain on a shelf (photo attached). The window view was miserable, too. The room badly needs renovation. I wouldn't book here, and I suspect some of the Booking reviews are fake.