Grand East Resort & Spa - Dead sea — Hotel in Balqa

I hardly logged on to comment, but an experience at this "hotel" is beyond bearing and needed to be reviewed. It is a prime example of how the star rating system is obsoleted.

Terrible services. Very dirty. We're treated better in a 2-4 stars tiny hotel in Petra and Amman. And if IHG have a room with 3 beds, we would've booked it instead of here, a noname 4 stars below the par services/facilities. Agreed with many reviewers. Worst hotel ever!

1. When we arrived, there's noone helping us with the luggage from our car or from the lobby to our room, even though, there are luggage trollies and staff standing at the entrance. Fine, in this 4 stars, we will wheel our own luggages to our own room. No worries.
2. There's 5 pools, but only 1 is opened, the rest is closed for maintenance. The lady pool is closed, how liberal.
3. The phone existed, tick, hence the 4 stars. Buttons not programmed nor has the instructions. So I couldn't call the lobby to fix the broken locks at the balcony. They send people to fixed it and told me it was my faults that I pressed the reception button that doesn't work while I should know that I should press #0. Sure. Customers are always wrong.
4. Broken balcony door lock. The lock was actually moving out of screw and not working, but worst when we close the door, there's loud noise of wind whistling that we have to leave the door open when we sleep. The guys that came to fix the phone, very smelly as they are heavy smokers, don't spreak English well and reckoned that they fixed the door. It is not, we left it open thoughout our our stay to sleep
5. Dirty floor, full of sand, and its not our sand. But hey 4 stars in Jordan is with sand complementary. My bad, cultural differences.
6. This is my last straw that made me logged in to comment. When we have our breakfast, most of the tables were dirty with breadcrumb in the morning, so we managed to choose the one that's not dirty. The bowls were dirty. The spoons and folks were not clean. But to our horror when we picked up our servettes, there's full mouth lipsticks mark on both servettes under both folded triangle servettes that was supposed to be clean at the table. So they reused their napkin. Very sustainable 4 stars. But that's not the end to our disgust
7. It's ramadan, so sure, we can be patient. We were so hungry and want to order cocktails and lunch by the only pool that was opened. There is no menu and staff can't help us because they don't speak English. We waited for ages and couldn't anymore after they said they will fetch the menu from the restaurant on the floor above. We went up and decided to order room service. Again because the programable room service button does not work, I pressed hash zero this time to reception to transfer me, and without the menu, I'm playing guessing game with the staff on the phone, who eventually asked me if I understand English because I didn't want any of the drink choice that he listed out to on the phone. I finally guess that they has beer and orders one instead of guessing their juice choices and endure bad English spreaker who looked down on my Australian English. The food took more than an hour & a half, and we called back to cancel so that we will drive else where to eat. The staff struggled again with my English and say yes yes yes to all my questions i.e., have you made our food already, and are you canceling it, how long would it take. Yes, yes, yes & hunged up on me. Efficient! Apparently, the food will be 5 minutes more while we second guessing of it was cancelled. Fine!
8. We booked the table at intercontinental hotel's restaurant because most restaurants except the breakfast place with used napkins were opened, then we realised how red carpet we were threated as it was raining. They don't belittling us. They treated us with respect. They give us umbrella. The pool was prettier and cleaner. The food was amazing and when it rain heavily, they picked is up in a golf car to out car park and we are not their guests.

You called yourself a 4 star, how much did you pay for this...

Helpful, supportive and professionalMohamed SalahExtremely professional and doing his best to solve guests problems. Very polite and respectfulMuneer and layaliSome of the reception staff are rude with bad manners, they speak to the guests as if they are nothing.• Restaurant:Extremely bad service and below poor, even the restaurant manager was shouting at his stuff in front of the guests while having dinner using inappropriate language. First, the restaurant was full and couldn't find an empty table! Second, the tables were never ready or fully prepared. Waiters removed my food before I finish eating, I asked why did you remove my plates? He said: I need to prepare for the next service!!! (No comments) Not much of options for restaurants, I only saw one. The other was shutdown completely. At night, there is a music band at the terrace area. Food and buffet: Below average and it's not an international buffet as I have been told. Room:Had and issue with the A/C since I checked in at 12:00 pm. Informed the recipient manager at that time, but no action was taken until I had to be serious with them and asked for a refund. Yet the A/C never worked!!! (Only fan was working, but not cooling). The excuse was: "there was problems in the main power station"!!!I guess the main power station was targeting few of the hotel bedrooms only?! But not the restaurant or the hotel lobby! But if so, the hotel should be equipped with extra generators as a backup. I wasn't the only guest who had the same issue, there were few also. They tried to relocate me to another room, but it had the same A/C problems. Leakage in the bathroom while showering. Room size is decent and good. I spent the entire night (until 1am) at the hotel lobby as it was cooler and had a strong A/C. They told me it's fixed, I went back to the room, but still wasn't cooling.The general manager got informed about the situation. He directly came to me and apologised plus he refunded a price for one night.In fact, the GM (Mr. Sami Al Khatieb & the receptionist Mr. Mohamed Salah) are the only two who were trying to help.So, special thanks to both of them.Reception Manager:At the time I checked in, I asked him to send some one to spray the room as there was some flys and muscitus, he said: we are in an area full of flys and moscitus!!! (No comments). Yet, he never sent anyone.Cleaning:Poor and not meeting a 4 stars standard as there are some rubbish in the corridor area, by the pool, by the beach and even in the room balcony. Also there were some incects and spiders in the room and in the bathroom.In general, the hotel and the building is good but needs some repairs, plus they have a nice spa and gym, swimming pools are really nice. They also have a nice swimming pool for kids with some sliding tubes.Also they have a huge swimming pool for adults.As facilities, yes it's 4 stars. But as service, 1 star only.I have been in a lower rate hotels and resorts but they were way better in service and facilities.The majority of staff don't want to work plus they are rude.But also there are some really excellent employees as I mentioned earlier.Shame that the bad employees are giving a very bad image for the hotel and for the good employees.Location: Nothing much around the hotel, only a restaurant and a small shop outside the hotel on the left side once you exist the main gate ( it's around 10-15 minutes walking distance)You can use Uber and it's cheaper than the local taxi.3 kilometres from the hotel, there are some other hotels such as: the Marriott and Movenpick (which both are amazing). Also there is Samara mall. Theses hotels and the mall are full of many options for restaurants and cafes.If you ask me is it recommended, I personally wouldn't encourage to stay there.P.S: I stayed there from...

DO NOT BOOK THIS HOTEL!!! I am going to attempt to give a completely honest review about this property. Please do keep in mind that this hotel has its own good and bad points but the bad points overpower the good points making it a bad place.

Check in My party and I arrived at the hotel. It does look good from the outside but looks can be decieving. We reached the entrance of the hotel to be met by no one to unload out bags. We unloaded them ourselves and headed to the reception to check in. The reception table has the seating capacity for 6-8 staff but has been staffed by 2 people. At the reception you can also find a frame stating that the Grand East Resort is a 4 start property. Please dont fall for that frame. After a short while, we were shown us our rooms. And you guessed it right. No one to handle the bags. So we took the bags to our rooms ourselves.

We had booked 2 non smoking rooms. But I guess the rules aren't really followed at Grand East Resort. One of the rooms we got had a strong stench of cigarettes. We called the house keeping dept and the manager to give us another room but they were unable to and offered to "clean" and change the sheets of the room in hopes that the smell would go away.

Rooms From the looks of it, the management at Grand East Hotel has forgotten about the property. It looks completely neglected. The tiles have uplifted from the floor. The bathroom situation is unspeakable of. Theres leaks everywhere. It was as if "Dark & Dingy" was the theme they were going for. Not to mention that the floor in the room was unclean.

Facilities The Grand East did a good job in terms of facilities. It has direct access to the Dead Sea. They also provide a shuttle service from the hotel to the beach area if you dont want to walk there. The property also boasts 3 swimming pools. One might think that this is great, but given the water scarcity in the region, this is not necessary. They can rather use the money required for the upkeep of the swimming pools to repair the broken rooms.

Views The Grand East Hotel does offer an amazing view of the Dead Sea. The hotel overlooks the Dead Sea and you can see the banks of Israel at sundown. It does also have the best view of sunset. If you still end up booking a room here after reading this review, please ask for a room in the center as opposed to the side so that you can view the sunset from your room.

Breakfast The brekafast offered at this hotel is good as compared to the bad service they provide. They have everything you would expect for the price you pay.

Checkout The checkout process was very similar to the checkin process. No one to pick up your bags from the room. Nor anyone to help you load it in your car. I am guessing this service is not included in 4 star hotels. I asked one of the reception staff as to why there wasn't anyone to help us with the bags and she did not have any answer. Maybe I was expecting too much from a 4 star hotel.

If you have made it to the end of this detailed review I hope I have managed to change your mind about the booking. Yes, the prices might be compelling as compared to the other hotels in the area but this place is certainly not 4 star. The whole place seems to be hanging on a string and need an urgent deep cleaning and pressure washing session. And if you are an employee of the Grand East Hotel reading this, please, do something. You guys have a lot...