Occidental Praha — Hotel in Prague

I found it really hard to rate this hotel. We give it 4 stars, because of the price we paid, but the hotel has many shortcomings.

First of all, we booked at Occidental Praha Five but after arriving there they said there was a technical error on the junior suite floor and therefore they had to move us to this Occidental hotel. This one is really out of the way compared to Praha Five, so it was a little disappointing. The reception said we got an upgrade to a Junior Suite, but we already booked a junior suite. Then we got to the room, finding a double bed instead of the twin room we requested. After going to reception about this issue, they had to downgrade us to an Executive room on the highest floor. We only accepted it because of the low price. We could have been in a junior suite in Praha Five, but now we were in a downgraded room on a much worse location. They did nothing to compensate the downgrade, no free drink or anything. Though, the staff at reception was pretty friendly.

When we arrived in our Executive room, we found the following things positive: -Really clean -Modern design -Comfortable beds -Great view from the 14th/13th floor

But there were a lot of things that weren't great in this room: -Open bathroom design (only fun if you are a couple) -Small room, no room to store your luggage or unpack your luggage. It was all very tight. -No coffee maker in an Executive room?? The junior suite did have a coffee machine with little cups -The twin beds were rollaway beds, one of them would constantly move -For a chain as Barcelo, i would have expected a fully featured TV with multiple entertainment options like Chromecast, YouTube, room service etc. but the TV, while large, only had some TV channels. (Courtyard by) Marriott for example does this much better. -No vanity mirror -Wallpaper started peeling on multiple places

Also the building itself feels really cheaply built. Bad sound isolation, could hear other rooms and constantly people taking the lifts. Speaking of the lifts, also really cheaply built lifts. Slow, they shake a lot on the higher floors, very small. Only three (slow) lifts for a 13 story building. I also find that the hotel itself is really boring. The reception area really feels like a simple 2005...

The dinner situation is a sad sad comedy piece. Dinner starts at 7 pm and finishes at 9. The previous night we went to eat dinner at 8. Food was running low, there isn't much to choose from to begin with either. Alright, no problem we thought, we will go earlier. We were waiting around the dining hall at 6:58-ish with the doors closed. We waited 5-8-10 minutes, doors still closed. Then I went to the reception to ask what's the matter, where the dinner is going to be. The receptionist didn't know, she had to ask her colleague. She didn't know either so went away to ask someone else. When she came back, she explained that it's going to be somewhere else. We went there. At 7:10(!) we went to open the containers and picked ourselves food. Cheese in breadcrumbs in particular. We, the 3 men took out all except one, because we were hungry. (We also took stew and something else. These were all the main dishes) The man behind us took the last. After that, the waiter took a look at it, checked that it's empty. They are going to replace it. So we thought. My mother ate soup for first, that turned out to be a mistake because she couldn't eat anything. We ended up having to give her the cheese because she really isn't fond of meat. They just simply didn't replace the cheese at all. Poof, gone. So by 7:10, just 10 minutes the dinner started, one of the main dishes from the 3 was already gone. Horrendous. Don't ever pay for dinner here. A disgrace to the whole industry. Breakfast is perfectly fine. Staff is generally nice. Receptionist don't know what they are doing. At all. At least they can understand English. The rooms aren't too soundproof. And you have to be comfortable with who you stay with, because the toilet and the shower has translucent walls at some places and you can see everything if the...

Dangerous place.

We paid 1.300€ for 4 nights and we got a room where the windows were not insulated, so we felt the cold wind coming through the windows into our beds. And on top of that at night they switched off the heating so the cold from the windows was not at all compensated. So my small child got sick. And the hotel management told me that it is cold outside so we need to take care of our son better. There was also emergency alarm triggered by some guest. But not in the whole building. I had my husband and my son at the breakfast where nobody knew about any alarm. In case of real emergency, this is deadly. And the hotel management said that the emergency systems are perfectly fine as they were tested 2 weeks ago. But that was apparently a lie as the systems did not work (properly) in the restaurant. The person who I refer to as ‘management’ was some employee of the hotel chain from Barcelona who used manipulative techniques and threatened me with calling a police if I don’t stop complaining. It happened to me already two years ago when staying there that we got a room with poor windows and broken heating, having 15’C in the room over night. Thus, I sent the hotel message in advance asking for checking our room prior arrival. Nobody responded, nobody cared. The rooms were not so well cleaned as I noticed when my toddler played on the floor upon arrival. Last time we also experienced totally cracked shower which was leaking under the bed.. and so on. Every time not functioning ventilation at the toilet. Embedded speakers in the ceiling making weird sounds. As windows do not seal, you hear every dog down on the street, not mentioning busses or the construction side underneath building...