COOP Hotel Sofia / COOP Hotel Sofia — Hotel in Sofia City

I've never stayed anywhere else in Sofia so cannot comment on whether this is great for Sofia, but international 4* standard, it isn't.||||Most of the staff are lovely, apart from the member of staff who decided one evening that we were not allowed to have a glass of wine in the lobby bar because the bottle of wines were "reserved" and "for show" (the excuse changing from one minute to the next.) He couldn't explain who or why they were reserved or for show.||||The room servicing is, interesting. They say in the information in the room that the rooms are serviced daily. On the first day it wasn't serviced at all. The second, I asked it to be serviced and the towels replaced which they did but then (not joking) they screwed up the cover on the bed and put it in the corner, made half an effort to pull up the duvet, emptied a bin and did nothing else.||||Coffee and tea making facilities in the room is a real plus but they were not refreshed / refilled during our stay either, even when the room was "serviced".||||The bed was comfortable but one of those fit together beds rather than a true king size. It was huge but possible to get a bit caught in the middle. That said though, we didn't struggle with noise as other people did.||||The breakfast is fine. Typical central European type stuff and not the best quality but fresh fruit is always welcome. If it's a choice between room only at a cheaper price, I wouldn't recommend paying extra for it though.||||The door lock was a bit temperamental. It's worth checking it's genuinely locked behind you as ours didn't unless we carefully engaged the catch. There are safes though.||||The lifts were a bit dodgy as well. One obviously breaking down from time to time during our stay and be warned you need your room card to go up or down.||||Location wise it's superb and I'm not saying I wouldn't stay there again but for the price, which is not cheap for Sofia, the service needs a bit of an uplift. Also some attention to detail in the rooms would be good with a slight tear in the voile, wallpaper lifting etc. ||||For British visitors though as this hotel is part of a Cooperative organisation, they have pictures of the first Rochdale COOP in some of the corridors. A funny little quirk if you know Rochdale. It's not the place you'd choose to...

Being in Bulgaria in July, we made sure every hotel we were staying at had air-conditioning, which COOP says it does. It was in the mid-thirties Celsius while in Sofia (hot), and our rooms were almost as hot as outside!||There were control panels in our rooms that said the a/c was set to 19-degrees Celsius, but our rooms were unbearably warm – more like 29-degrees. We’d call Reception, and after a short delay, the air-conditioning would click on but blow air that was barely cooler than our room and click off again after some time… so we’d call down again and go through the same scenario. It was like we had to complain about the temperature of our room for them to turn on our a/c, and the a/c was on a timer so it would turn off again without making any noticeable difference in room temp.||We were two couples with two rooms on different floors, both with the same issue. We stayed for three nights and went through calling Reception to get a/c for a short period of time over and over again. We did not have this issue at any other hotel in Bulgaria, so we changed hotels and did not stay at COOP our last night in Bulgaria when we returned to Sofia (and the other hotel’s air-conditioning in Sofia also worked just fine).||We think the individual rooms are NOT in control of their own a/c. It was horrible and Reception did not seem to care (and worse, they seemed to lie to us about it). The last night (when our Bulgarian guide came in to see if he could help us) they offered for us to change rooms, but our travel mates were having the same issues with their a/c, so we were sure a room change would not help... so why do it pack up to move to a different room for one night that would probably have the same issue?!?!||The rooms and bathrooms were very good and the location great, but we wouldn’t stay...

We had an amazing stay in the Coop Hotel. From the time we arrived the receptionist was very attentive. Nothing was too much trouble. Breakfast was lovely every morning, served until 10am. Lots of lovely food on offer from continental to cooked. The centre was around a 15 minute walk which was a nice stroll.The trams and metro were very easy to use too. The only part that disappointed my stay and let me not leave a 5 star review was the very rude cleaner who kept shouting at me in the toilets just as we're leaving to get the taxi to the airport. I explained I didn't speak Bulgarian so wasn't sure what she was saying but she continued to be rude and shout using hand gestures. This was so unnecessary and stressful on my depart. Hopefully the receptionist had words with her as she could see what she did as she followed me out of...