Best Western Plus Congress Hotel — Hotel in Yerevan

What I liked |The hotel has a prime location, very near to the center and all the attractions, walk for 5 minutes to be in the Republic Square, 10 minutes to be in Northern Avenue, it faces the Vardanians park, and if you are lucky with the room view, you will be able to see a daily fountain show from the balcony. |Room has mini fridge, plenty of drawers, a wardrobe that has the safe, iron and a nice big mirror|They also provide two sets of slippers and two bathrobes, to be honest they are really high quality, and not worn out. I have some comments I'll share down. |The housekeeping did an amazing job to keep the room spotless, I want to thank a beautiful lady called Sada who was the queen of housekeeping for our room during the stay, she kept a nice smile on her face and did her best all the time, thank you Sada. |Breakfast is served in the lobby, it has some international choices, two coffee machines and many choices of fresh juice, section for fresh lovely bakery, dried fruit, sauces and jams, the selection is kinda good for international travellers. One of the best things you can see there is a beautiful lady called Mariana, she greets everyone with a smile on the face, tries to help as much as she can, and remembered us when we walk there again, thank you Mariana, amazing job, keep it up. I have some dislikes about the breakfast I'll mention down|Internet is reliable and very fast, it covers many areas even outside of the hotel.|Bathroom amenities were of a top brand, the bathroom didn't miss a thing and they offer more things than what a person would need.|Bed was very comfortable, choices of two types of pillow and provided a third option upon request.|There is a ATM right after you enter the hotel.|They care about wheelchair access and prepared a ramp for easier accessibility.|The swimming pool is super clean, it has a smaller part for kids, the depth for adults goes from 1.6 - 2.6m, when you reach there they will provide large towels, and sure seats are all over the place, depending on your choice if you like it fully covered, half covered, or fully exposed to get the tan, some seats have water sprinkles around to keep you cool if the heat is high. A bar is around to provide all types of cocktails and sandwiches, it is little over priced but worth the experience. The pool can be reached from the hotel but the path to reach it is a real maze, so I recommend go out and access it from the main street as there is a dedicated gate. From my room I can see them cleaning the swimming pool the whole night, good job guys.|The room where I stayed had a small balcony, they placed a table and two chairs on it, I liked sitting and enjoy the view of the park in front of me||What I didn't like|The room AC outlets are located on top of the bed facing the wall, the room has to be frozen for you to feel anything, most of the nights I woke up sweating even that the room is really cold but air is not reaching the headboard side. |Speaking of the headboard I don't know who thought it is a good idea to put a spotlight, switches and electricity outlet right in the headboard of the bed, many times I hit my head with the spotlight they placed there, or when I move I hit the light switch so the room gets bright while I sleep which wakes me up to turn off the lights. |One very important thing for international travellers is the bidet, the hotel doesn't have it even that I called to check if they have before I booked it, the reception confirmed they have it then later wrote a message to apologise for the misunderstanding and that they don't have it, I believe it would be a big plus point if they can provide it in the toilet as it is essential for many. |Breakfast as mentioned above is offering good choices, but the down side of it is that they use pork in everything, it might be heaven for people who eat it but hell for people who don't, many of items I was unable to eat because of the pork mixing, I wish they consider this for the future. One important thing is that they don't have a live station for omelette which can make a difference to create your own omelette the way you wish to have it. |Noise, one of the biggest problems that I faced, they could have used some strips to add soundproofing or any positive point in the field, but no, I could easily hear the room opposite mine with all the talks and anything they ever do. There is a gap under the door that lets the noises come to your room all the time, let alone the talks of the staff right out of your room regardless if you have the DND sign or not, I had to go out to ask them to keep it quite. |I didn't like how they placed the rooms, in less than two meters there are 4 doors, three of them are guest rooms and one is "staff room" where they keep the housekeeping material stored, so you can imagine the noise almost all the time. |Parking of the hotel is extremely small and basically is part of the main road, our tour guide was facing a serious problem to find a spot to pick us up.|The corridor between rooms is really dark, could use some brighter lights. |A smile would be...

We stayed in Best Western Plus for 2 nights and I would highly recommend this hotel for its location which is in a beautiful embassy locality, its great bar and restaurant as well as its decent sized rooms. On the plus side, the stay was very comfortable. The service is slightly slow compared to many other countries but pretty good. Most of the staff is helpful. A lot of the staff also speak English hence it makes communication easy. We liked the breakfast spread which was mostly traditional egg dishes and a little bit of everything else making it pretty decent. The taste of the food is also good. Even though we love spicy food we didnt miss it because the food was very flavourful. We ordered room service on the days we were there and the food came well presented and also on time. The reception staff was also very efficient and answered all our queries immediately and helped us whenever we had a question. We had booked 2 rooms and both the rooms were well organised and set with an extra bed for the kids which was a pleasant surprise. Rooms were clean and had sufficient water, coffee supplies as well. The room service ladies are especially polite and helpful. On the negative side, it is surprising how the staff doesnt go beyond their official duties eg. our 6 year old daughter was struggling to open the door at the reception, the staff at reception was just chatting away but didnt bother to open the door for her despite standing right in front of the door. Nobody offers to take your luggage in or out, possibly thats not the norm in Yerewan. At the pool our kids were not allowed to swim stating that their swimwear wasnt apt. We are not comfortable with bikinis for our kids as it isnt in line with our cultural sensibilities. And what they were wearing at the pool was multi use sportswear was accepted in every other country as swimwear. However, the pool staff asked the kids to step out of the pool and leave with very little consideration for them being little kids or being flexible on making any accommodation for cultural sensibilities. Yet, they were polite and not rude and hence the experience while not great wasnt made worse. And yes, please beware of the cleaning lady who mops the floor in the morning, if you ever step on to the wet floor when she is around, hell will break loose. It happened twice that she yelled at the kids for walking over the floor that she had just mopped and was making very rude signs. She forced my wife to come back and walk over the unmopped floor. The mopped area is not visible to the eye because of the floor being dark. This can be solved by giving her a 'wet floor' stand so the guests notice the floor is being mopped and the lady is satisfied. Either ways, yelling at people because they walked over mopped floor doesnt live up to the standards of a 4 star hotel. However, she is also pretty senior in age so we understand its possibly an inconvenience for her. Its the hotel's issue not really the cleaning lady's issue as she has no way of communicating to foreigners. Other than these few incidents, we were very happy with the rest of our stay in the hotel. Would highly recommend this hotel and would also stay in it...

Pros:|Great location|Pool - it was crowded and loud, not exactly a relating place (lots of smokers), but we were very grateful to have it since it was over 100F every day|Breakfast buffet was delicious - probably the best we've ever had at a hotel|Staff was very kind, friendly, and helpful (with one exception I'll explain below)|Early morning breakfast option - if you have breakfast included, you can request an early premade food/coffee box, very basic but still appreciated when we had to be out the door before the buffet opened|Gym with sauna - nothing special, but my husband took full advantage and this was one of the reasons we chose this hotel|Free bottled water in the rooms - this seems so basic but many hotels have stopped doing this, and it was extremely hot in Armenia so we were very appreciative||Cons:|Loud - walls weren't thin but doors were, which meant we got constant hallway noise at all hours of the night and had to wear earplugs to sleep|Inconsistent quality - this is a 4 star hotel, and the breakfast and some amenities certainly felt that way, but the room and bathroom were very basic and didn't match the expectation, as well as the noise and the fact that some basic things were forgotten during housekeeping (our towels were taken for cleaning, but none were left to replace them until we informed the front desk)|Uncomfortable pillows - bed was okay, but pillows were lumpy and inconsistent, very uncomfortable|Expensive food - other than breakfast, the hotel food was outrageously priced and not very high quality|Limited air conditioning in room - you can set the air conditioner as low as you want, but it will never go below 20C, they've clearly locked it|*Check in error - I emailed ahead to ask if we'd be able to check in early since we'd be arriving at 6am off a redeye, and was promised our room would be ready when we arrived. When we got in, the front desk agent told us there was someone in our room, and this was an error from the staff who emailed us (I showed him the email). This would have been find had he then resolved the situation - instead he said there was nothing he could do, but he'd talk to her tomorrow about the mistake. I had to fight to get him to even look into a solution, which then took him an hour. Eventually we were given another room to rest in until ours was ready (our original very reasonable request - we just needed a bed for a few hours), but we shouldn't have been put in that position in the first place. Errors happen, but the hotel staff should have been the one to resolve the situation, not the guest. ||Overall we enjoyed our experience and got what we needed, but would probably try another hotel next time...