Royale Chulan Kuala Lumpur — Hotel in Kuala Lumpur

our 4 days 3 nights stay here weren’t that great. we booked studio, but been told that the room is the lowest specs due to the sizes and etc and they offered us upgraded to deluxe. as I need to cook for my son during the day we stick to our initial booking.

you know what the most unpleasant experience? the staff at the entrance after he loaded out our luggage, he just left our stuffs at the front door, and no one attended me that time. MY HAND IS FULL, I nee to carry my bags, my son running here and there, can you imagine? you have to carry the bag also at the same time to hold your son ALONE. I can sense they only help people with high standard looking with expensive cars. also one lady at the cafe during breakfast (really not friendly, making a weird face when i asked her for kids friendly cutlery.)

now the ROOM. ( dirty filthy carpets, no hand towels, one bath matt only, )what on earth you booked studio room with kitchen BUT THEY DIDNT PROVIDE YOU THE DISH SOAP? NO BOWL NO PLATES NO FORK SPOON ETC NO COOKING UTENSILS, until u asked them. okay they gave us bowl pot n pans. can you imagine we only have ONE FREAKING SMALL SPOON. for our 4 days stay? how to eat? and how to drink? and the worse part! YOU PAID FOR THE ROOM BUT THE MICROWAVE ISNOT WORKING.

oh ya dont forget about the two telephones provided in the rooms. BOTH CANNOT BE USED. but guess what? during our last day, wow, i was so suprised, we receive a call from front desk (it was 12.30pm) i guess that’s a call to remind us to get off from the room asap. oh wow? does the phone is working ? i cant even use your phone for 4 days for emergency / housekeeping, I EVEN HAD TO CALL THE HOTEL USING MY OWN PHONE, and also they didn’t take any actions even i said the phone cannot be use, but you have the audacity to call your guests to fasten up the checking out process?

most of your staffs are not friendly(dining hall) except the front desk for checking in/out. ive been to perdana hotel, split second they help you to bring the bag, they even open the car door for you, the smiles and everything. same goes to four seasons, their services top notch.

oh ya breakfast? naah. western food very bland minimal option, , sambal nasi lemak, still got the flakes, nasi lemak very nice, but the good thing was, their croissants, when they’re still hot, very delicious. otherwise, most of the staff at the cafe were not very friendly, not even a smile or a good gesture to welcome us. i dont know, because ive been to few hotels such as : pavilion hotel, majestic, sofitel damansara, Four Seasons hotel, perdana hotel, i have never experienced any unpleasant/unfriendly staff. so yeah. but front desk staff, very friendly and professional

NEVER EVER...

We were very disappointed. We booked a non cancellable room two months before. A few days before we arrived we advised that we may arrive late. The hotel informed that rooms will be allocated based on availability. I said that I wanted the Premier King room that I had booked and nothing less. They again replied that allocation depends on availability when we arrive. Anyway, turns out we got the room type we wanted albeit with zero view. We looked onto a broken tiled roof. Room size was okay but not the advertised 40sq metres. No bath mat, no hand towels, no bath robes, dirty carpet, dirty pillow case that smelled like it was not replaced, poorly maintained furniture. I tried calling reception but the room phone was not working. I requested the missing items that were then provided. Regarding the phone not working, reception merely said oh yeah the phones on that side of your floor were not working. The next day the bath mat was again not replaced. I requested one and they sent a torn mat. I also informed the cleaner about a nail sticking out of the carpet and that I had stepped on it. He told me to inform maintenance. Seriously! I have to try to contact maintenance? On our third day we arrived back to the hotel at 10pm to find that the room had not been cleaned. We went to reception who said they will get housekeeping. After waiting a short while I said I would rather check out and go to another hotel than to wait for housekeeping. Then they called the manager who said that since I had booked non cancellable it may be difficult to get a refund and even if he could manage to get a refund for us it may take a month or more. ! He said he could give me another room. I didn't see why I should now have to pack my stuff at almost 11pm and move to another room. He said we'll he is offering me a suite and will have the porters help us move. At this point I just wanted to leave and even forget about any refund for what would be our last night at the Royale Chulan. However, leaving would still me packing up and then having to find another hotel at close to midnight. This situation was really stressful. Finally we decided to just accept another room at the same hotel. I must admit, the suite room was really nice albeit that the bedsheet was dirty and had to be replaced. Man! We will never go back there and will advise others against staying at the Royale Chulan. They hold themselves out to be 5 stars but are not even 3 stars in my opinion. By the way, we spoke to some staff who told us that there were many complaints about...

Wow, what a really bad experience from start to finish! Be warned - this was surely one of the worst hotels we’ve ever seen in our extensive travels across Asia.

We lost a full afternoon of exploring KL as it took them literally two hours to finally honour our paid and confirmed Agoda booking (and assign us a disgusting room, more on that below). In the meantime, we had to wait in the lobby and chase down four different levels of managers, facing all sorts of attempts to fob us off. Initially, they plainly refused to accommodate us at all. It was only after we insisted to stay that they tried to downgrade us to a four-star hotel somewhere else. Lengthy discussions followed, after which it was suddenly questioned that we had even paid our booking. And then the foreigners’ tax. After (literally) running after different front desk managers, duty managers, room division managers for two hours and showing multiple times our booking confirmation plus proof of payment plus proof of payment of foreigners’ tax, we were finally assigned a room. We were then told that they often had problems with Agoda bookings - but is that the way to deal with a recurring problem then? On the back of your customers? Also, they didn’t proactively offer any sort of compensation for the ordeal and the loss of valuable holiday time - only our insistence ultimately led to them giving us a dinner in the hotel restaurant.

To add insult to injury, the room we were assigned was a total disgrace (see pictures). Run down, dark, dirty and with a breathtakingly bad smoke smell. Stained sheets, stained carpets, dirt on the floor, dirt and hair on the bathroom floor, loose appliances, mold… We immediately returned to the reception and spoke again to their room divisions manager. Afterwards, we were given an upgrade to a suite.

The suite itself was in a better condition than the first room, apart from some stained bed sheets. However, it was quite noisy from the street, so the sleep quality was mediocre at best. To top it all off, we discovered a dead cockroach on the floor in the morning.

We had hoped for a pleasant five-star accommodation in traditional Malay style in a prime location of KL. What we got at the Royale Chulan was an absolute service nightmare, a lot of frustration and a proof of how shabby and dirty their actual rooms are, with even the suites in dubious sanitary conditions. As a consequence, we would strongly advise anyone against choosing this hotel as there are so many better...