King's Suites Hotel — Hotel in Ras Beirut

Firstly, the hotel itself is fine. Functional, clean, a little better than basic. But just. Staff were great though, very friendly and helpful.||||The city itself is stunning is the true sense of the word. Decades of fighting in the city have left its mark both physically and culturally. Everywhere you go, you'll see buildings riddled with bullet holes, really fascinating stuff. In some parts of the city, you have to look hard for a building not scarred by war, but thankfully that's all in the past (ahem!).||||So here's the problem: Beirut is a city divided in half. There is essentially a Muslim and a Christian side of Beirut. In the Muslim side you'll find some of the most famous tourist attractions, but you won't find many restaurants serving alcohol (or pork). This is of course, not a problem if you're Muslim, but if you're not, it means having to traverse the city to get the areas where alcohol is available (most notably, Germayze etc).||||The King's Suites Hotel, is in an excellent location in that it's very close to the famous Pidgeons rock (Raouché), however, this is the Muslim side. As a consequence, we spent about $60 per day getting to and from the other side of the city, where we could eat and drink what we wanted.||||Makes a big difference knowing you're only 10 minutes walk from your hotel after a long day sightseeing, rather than a 30 minute drive in traffic. Did to us anyway.||||One other thing, be sure to visit Byblos (1 hour up the coast), which has a fabulous excavation site (over...

So I booked a suite with kitchenette if you book this don't bother there were no plates knives forks in the room not even one pan then I was told the electric hob had been turned off .Can't call it a kitchenette as had no oven anyway yet previous places I have stayed in Beirut have these amenities. After some time manager Norma came and room was changed where I had a working hob ..following this I had to go down to the basement and get my own frying pan and saucepan Norma says these are not provided so obviously they expect tourists to bring a case of pots pass and plates .. what a joke ! Terrible pool gets no sun as the place is blocked by high rise buildings so couldn't even enjoy this . Apparently the pool gets one hour of sun a day .definitely not a 4 star hotel plus Norma laughing in my face when I asked for the basic utensils .only thing decent was room size..lights weren't working properly either and had no balcony .So beware what you pay for ! Only decent staff was Nerbil on reception even the other guy ripped me off with a sim card told me 85 dollars and should have been 50 so he got 35 dollars commission! Pictures of pool attached...

The room: standard, clean - we were upgraded to a suite however the stove didn't work at all, the bathroom was smaller than a standard room (have stayed here a year ago), one bath towel given per two people, and banging and drilling every morning from 7:00am.... ||||Upon checkout it took more than 40 minutes of 'arguing' to say the least about the price we were to pay. I had it in writing from the hotels.com website an amount - however the reception staff decided this was not the right price and added $20USD per night PLUS tax on top.... in addition, their credit card machines wouldn't work so we had to pay cash. Seems to me that something shifty was going on. Now, after showing the female receptionist and her colleague the confirmation from hotels.com - they still argued we had to pay more. By the end the receptionist rudely told me that i should 'just pay the amount and that I had no respect' - she even said if it were her she would just pay it.... ||||Finally - after much continual showing them the confirmation - they finally charged us the CORRECT amount.||||I would not recommend this hotel and will never stay...