Le Commodore Hotel — Hotel in Ras Beirut

I've travelled to quite a few countries, tasted different foods and experienced cultures and obviously had my fair share of hotel experiences. One of which leads me on to my review of this hotel.

I know most hotels tart up their images to turn what is effectively a prison cell into the Ritz Carlton hotel. The Le Commodore is one such place that lulls you into the false sense of security that you're actually in a 5 star hotel.

The reception area is nice, with vast marble walls and high ceilings. The rooms, on the other hand not so much.

The photos make the rooms look like palaces but once you realise what's going on you're sharing a room roughly the size of a match box. I literally had to breakdance to get around the room.

As usual with Middle Eastern hotels, every time you have a shower water leaks all over the bathroom floor and I have to swim my way out of there, and they only provide one towel even though there are two people staying.

The air con had two settings, freeze to death or melt your eyebrows off, and the TV had three channels working even though the booklet showed 56 - the dubbed CSI Miami on channel 42 was excellent though. They apprehended the criminal with state of the art technology and perfect lip sync in Arabic.

The window, although shut still let all noise in, l swear I heard someone fart one night, and it definitely wasn't us.

The swimming pool is another great example of excellent Photoshop skills. You're thinking that you're going to be the next gold medalist in this pool, it looks massive in the photos. Hmm how many lengths could I do before I get knackered? Maybe 3 or 4 full pelt, 5 if I'm feeling brave.

No. No? No.

You dive in one end, coming up to your first stroke, right arm. Woah! Good power Selcuk, really chugging forward now. Left arm, in the power. Woosh! I feel like a frikking dolphin!

BANG!

You've smacked your head into the other side of the pool, body following suit as inertia kicks in leaving you in a crumpled mess and wondering what went wrong with your life.

If you haven't guessed, the pool is tiny compared to the photo, as I looked out of the window and saw it for the first time I honestly thought that what I had clapped before my eyes was the childrens pool.

Anyway, the hotel wasn't that bad though. The rooms were very clean and the beds were really comfortable. The staff were really excellent, always there to help, really polite and friendly and I always felt welcome. Respect.

We didn't have breakfast as they wanted 20 US Dollars per person per day. Daylight robbery. So we ate out instead.

Overall not a bad stay but for a 5 star hotel although I would have...

Terrible experience. I made the same booking by mistake for a day from 2 different bookings pages. Even if my bookings were showing in their system as same booking, same person, same hotel, staff refused to help me. They asked me to contact booking.com because they can’t do anything about it. After i was in touch with booking.com i was told that hotel is the only one who can help me change the stay(i didn’t ask for refund i asked for change of dates!!!!!!). Staff extremly useless, it was very difficult for me to even have a conversation with them because i went trough a surgery a day before and i was there to recover. After 2 days of me trying to talk and explain my situation they told me there’s nothing they can do about it even if my reservation appeared in their system booked twice !!!!! They refused. The duty manager Mazen was even super rude and laughed in my face telling me it’s not his duty of solving such issues. I decided to check out and booked another hotel because there was no point to extend in a hotel that my money was stolen. At check out they told me it s okay i can extend another day for free. I m just speechless of such customer service, after having to go through many arguments with 3 of the staff and to be told it s nothing they can help with. I came there to recover after a surgery not to have useless arguments with the reception staff! Terrible experience. Terrible managment. They could have helped me from day one, they didn t want!!!! I definetly don’t recommend just because the rudeness of the staff.||||Rooms are ok but they smell very bad. If you’re non smoker you...

I stayed at the hotel for 4 nights as a solo traveller. This hotel may have been a 5 star hotel 30 years ago but certainly not anymore. Very outdated.||||1. Internet - Was dreadful. I did a speed check and it was less than 1 mbs (only enough to send an email). I was unable to watch the movies on my laptop. I complained and was given a different username and password. It did improve slightly but I still had streaming issues.||||2. Pool - Who would build an outdoor pool on the ground floor blocked by 4 huge buildings. One of the reasons I booked this hotel was that I wanted to relax in the sun after a busy period of work. The pool got around half an hour of sun a day in on corner about 11am. Therefore it was impossible to relax in the sun. I had to buy a day pass at another hotel in order to enjoy the sun. Not what you expect from a so called 5 star hotel costing over $500 for the 4 nights I stayed.||||3. Breakfast - Was ok, but nothing special at all. No egg station, no smoked salmon or avacado, no granola. Just a bog standard continental breakfast. No where near worth the extra $40 per night. Having said that the guy at breakfast was super helpful and friendly. ||||4. Room - the room was ok, but lacked floor space considering it was meant to be a 'deluxe double room'. The key card failed almost every time so had to keep returning to reception for a new card. ||||All round a very basic stay at a so called 5-star hotel. ||||Not recommended if you...