Nice Prince Hotel

I’ve stayed here a few times over the years. Having underground parking is a big convenience, and the rooms are roomy. It’s connected to the mall next door, which makes getting around easy. Breakfast is decent, though not the best. The price also seems reasonable beside Taiwan’s wildly inflated hotel rates.

There was plenty to choose from at dinner, and breakfast was splendid too. The pasta chef was especially friendly and even offered to make a fresh, piping hot serving. The hotel rooms and the corridor outside them are spacious, with soothing lighting that isn’t too dim like in some Taipei hotels. The ambience felt comfortable.

I paid extra for the spa, but the sauna was lukewarm and there was no way to turn up the heat. The steam room was much too hot, with no way to stop the steam, and the jacuzzi temperature was nowhere near the displayed degrees. It was almost boiling. After that, I left, only to find the shower still had no hot water after 3-5 minutes. Standing naked under cold running water waiting for it to warm up was miserable. I didn’t dare try the restaurants after all that. Just one night, I told myself. :) I also just killed a cockroach. I really don’t think this place deserves to be called a 5 star hotel, though maybe our ideas of what that means are different. When I asked the young woman at check-in where to throw away the trash bag I was holding, she told me to go out the side door and look to the left. Some welcome for a new customer. There were a couple of good interactions later with the bell captain and the young woman at the Spa station on the 17th floor. My room was spacious, clean, and plainly but adequately decorated, but it didn’t feel luxurious and smelled of cleaning material. The walls were so thin I could hear every word of the next room’s conversation, including what sounded like a disagreement about dinner.

The location works well, with a mall right beside the building and Starbucks and McDonald’s nearby. The price seems okay for this sort of hotel. But the parking lot has a loud ventilation noise, the room smells moldy, and my mattress had a big dent. The bedside USB charger didn’t work, and none of the facilities could be used even after the pandemic. There’s still a lot they could improve.