Emaar Grand

I especially appreciated Mootez Ahmed’s service. He was professional, kind, and ready to help throughout my stay. The Emaar Grand Hotel was clean, comfortable, and well located for visitors in Mecca. My room was neat and the atmosphere was calm and welcoming. I had a very pleasant stay and highly recommend it.

The location made it easy to get around, but the poor room service and housekeeping made the stay disappointing. The room wasn’t well maintained, and basic services were lacking. We had to ask several times for towels, which only arrived two days later. Housekeeping told us the hotel had around 10 towels for 40 rooms and just one iron for those rooms. That explains the delays, but it’s not acceptable for guests. We stayed here last year and it was a lot better. Now the service has gone downhill while the price has gone up.

The food was good, but the staff were pathetic. We had three rooms for a week. On the first day, receptionist Motaz Ahmed helped get all three rooms on the same floor. After that, our experiences with the staff were awful. Our rooms had no soup, slippers, iron, or towels. The phones didn’t work when we tried to complain, so I went downstairs. Towels came a few hours later, and soup arrived the next day. We still never got slippers or an iron. At breakfast and sahour the next morning, the tables were sticky and dirty. The staff responsible for cleaning clearly weren’t doing the job properly. When Ramadan started, extending the rooms was a nightmare. Reception and the reservation office weren’t helpful, and it took three hours of going back and forth to sort it out. At checkout, we waited 30 minutes for a bellman. In the end I had to pull the trolley and take our bags downstairs myself, then staff started asking why I’d done that. If they won’t do their jobs, guests have to.

There are local shops nearby that stay open 24/7, handy for food and essentials. The rooms are clean and modern. Masjid al-Haram is about a 5-10 minute walk down the road, so there’s no real need for a taxi unless you prefer one. Taxis are available if needed. It’s a convenient place for walking to the mosque, with decent contemporary rooms and shops close by around the clock.