Pacific Express Hotel Central Market

The room service cleaned promptly after I reported the dusty floor and the missing floor mat. Still, the bathrooms were a culture shock for me as an Indian: there are no locks on the bathroom doors, and the toilets don't have bidets. It's a great hotel otherwise.

You can exchange money, arrange tours, and buy convenience items without leaving the hotel premises. The location is handy too, attached to Central Market and about a minute from River of life, which lights up at night. Rooms are decent and there’s a rooftop pool. The staff were helpful, especially manager Mr Azizi, who was supportive and seemed to manage things well for tourists. The breakfast is the big letdown. The attached cafeteria isn’t actually part of the hotel, and the same four items show up every day. For Indian tourists, that meant fried rice, toast, and eggs that weren’t cooked through. There’s no room service or bellboy to help with luggage, either. If Makemytrip or Veena world books this as part of a package with breakfast, don’t assume the hotel is providing that meal.

I keep coming back when I’m in town for work. It’s a decent choice for a short getaway too, and the price feels fair. The room is clean, though there’s room for improvement and sound carries through the walls. They provide drinking water and a hairdryer.

I’d read the negative reviews before our trip, and now I understand why people wrote them. This stay badly affected how we feel about Kuala Lumpur, and we won’t be back. We don’t plan to visit Malay or KL again, and we’ll tell others about what happened. We ended up checking out the next day and booking another hotel for the remaining two nights, at our own expense. It was already late, and we decided to go despite getting no refund. The first room smelled of cigarettes, so we asked to change rooms. The replacement was a little better, but the bedsheets and blanket had visible stains that looked like urine and blood. We asked for the sheets to be changed; the next set was dirty too and smelled foul. We raised the issue with Trip.com. After contacting the hotel, they told us the General Manager wouldn’t offer an upgrade or refund, though Trip.com said it would ask for those. We would have accepted just moving hotels. There was no proper solution from either the hotel or Trip.com. Trip.com later offered a 10% refund in points. We felt that was inadequate given how serious the problems were. I understand Trip.com didn’t control the hotel’s response and wasn’t at fault, but it was happy to take its share when there were no problems. We also found there was no hot water. Guests on the 6th floor yelled and screamed from midnight into the early morning, so we couldn’t rest. The hotel was overcrowded, one elevator was broken, and maintenance and service fell short even for a three-star place. We didn’t pay hostel prices.