The Majestic Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Autograph Collection — Hotel in Kuala Lumpur

Built in 1932, this property was formerly called Hotel Majestic. During its heyday, It was the largest and grandest hotel in Kuala Lumpur, unrivalled for its prestige and luxury. The original hotel featured custom-designed furniture, silverware and furnishings imported from England. It finally closed its doors in 1983 and was turned into an art gallery between 1984 and 1998.

Then came YTL, a Malaysian hotel group, which painstakingly restored the original building to 48 luxurious suites with full butler service. It was later renamed the Majestic Wing. In addition, a new building called Tower Wing was built. It not only features prominent elements of the Majestic Wing, but also includes modern touches to make the hotel more attractive and welcoming to the modern day travellers. This new wing houses 253 guest rooms and suites. The Majestic Hotel Kuala Lumpur finally opened in 2012 and had since welcome many international travellers.

I had arrived at the hotel on a Friday afternoon. The check in registration was fuss free. I must commend the staff service here is great. I had booked a Deluxe Twin Room on the Tower Wing and was accommodated in Room No. 1521. The room is spacious at 40 square metres. Despite its age, the interior and its room are well maintained. The Housekeeping Dept takes pride in the cleaning and maintenance of its appliances inside the room. There is an iron and ironing board, which upon closer inspection, the iron soleplate was found to be clean and free of stains. During my travels overseas, I can say 90% of the hotels, including 4-star hotels do not check and clean their iron soleplates regularly. So, the fact that they take the effort to ensure the iron soleplate is clean speaks volume of the professionalism of the Housekeeping Dept. I am also delighted there is a turn down service at this property.

There is no SMART TV in this room. Besides the free-to-air TV channels, there are some Cable TV channels such as AXN, Bloomberg TV, CNA and Nat Geo Wild. There is no power socket and no USB charging ports at the bedside. So, you will not be able to charge and use your mobile device at the same time on the bed.

One interesting feature of the room is the inclusion of a TV in front of the bathtub. The bathroom is an open glass enclosure which comes with a large sliding glass door separating the bedroom. You will need to pull down the shades to use the bathroom if you are staying with another guest. Its shower area and WC are also partitioned by glass. While this makes the bathroom looks spacious and aesthetic, only one guest can use it at a time.

The swimming pool, fitness centre and garden are on the fifth floor. I highly recommend visiting the Majestic Wing to admire the original architecture and interior of the hotel. The Majestic Spa and an outdoor pool which overlooks the old Kuala Lumpur Railway Station are housed there. Do remember to check out the beautiful Tea Lounge, Colonial Café, The Bar and not forgetting The Orchid Conservatory.

The buffet breakfast is served at a 250-seater Contango Restaurant. It is possibly the best I had eaten among my travels overseas. The variety and quality of the food is unbeaten. The menu comprises of local, Asian, Western and European food catered to international travellers.

Unfortunately, there is no shopping mall within walking distance from the hotel. The distance from the hotel to the following places is as follows:

Central Market - 1.5km Chinatown - 1.7km KL Sentral - 2.2km Bukit Bintang - 3.4km Petronas Twin Towers - 5.6km

I recommend The Majestic Hotel Kuala Lumpur if you wish to stay close to KL Sentral or in an area far away from the crowds, yet near to the city sights. If like to travel back in time to experience the old-world elegance, The Majestic Hotel Kuala...

This was my second stay at the Majestic. The previous one being many years ago. The service went downhill, and our room is lackluster. We stayed in the Colonial suite.

Check in was slow - even though we booked directly with the hotel, they didn’t have our booking. The concierge and check in staff were very nice.

The suite The styling of the rooms and the entire majestic wing is beautiful. We really loved the bath salts and the water pressure was absolutely great. However, having mold in the light shades in our room is absolutely unacceptable. And some stains on the rug we could look past, but there were also many dark and very obvious stains on the headboard - not a good look. Additionally the scale in the bathroom was broken and the overall cleanliness could definitely be improved. Especially the mold around A/C doesn’t inspire confidence in the air quality and is probably a health and safety hazard. However, generally the rooms were well maintained - given the age of this part of the hotel - besides the points mentioned.

Breakfast The breakfast is quite big, however many options are generally not consistent quality, and many not high enough quality, there a better breakfasts at hotels that are significantly cheaper in KL. We left the breakfast not 80% full, and we are generally not picky eaters. The staff generally doesn’t give a warm or friendly atmosphere. There is definitely a lack of healthy options at the breakfast. For example, there is no plain yoghurt - the yoghurts are full of sugar. There is no healthy granola (just grains and fruit/nuts) - just sugary. When I wanted to grab a sweet dessert, the waffles and pancakes were all gone and it looked like they were not going to be refilled - which is understandable given it was close to closing time and would be wasteful to have a large amount lying around, but it seems to me that there should have been a couple of pancakes or waffles available.

The juices are not fresh and they are not great quality. The coffee is very low quality - dark roasted (burned) beans. The iced latte I ordered came in a tiny juice glass. 70% coffee, 30% milk. The beans are very dark roasted and the machines are not correctly configured (far too hot). The coffee was definitely our lowlight as we value good coffee and this could be significantly improved. We would get coffee outside the hotel and considered skipping the included breakfast. Definitely wouldn’t book the breakfast option again if we ever come back.

Overall we were a bit disappointed. I remembered the hotel being great (stayed in another suite in the newer part of the hotel years ago) and while the hotel has a lot of potential (it’s certainly charming) - it has fallen off in recent years and there are so many good options in KL, especially around this price point - where I would rather spend my time.

Update: We got offered a different room on our last day of our stay because of the mold issue which was nice. The manager also invited us for lunch and assured me they would assess and resolve the A/C situation. So we might be back in the future. We just love the ambiance of the...

Strongly do not recommend staying here.

1. Location - it's hardly anywhere near anything. Void of any public transportation, any convenience stores, food eateries, locations for sight seeing. Other than ordering overpriced meals at the hotel, you will have to travel out just to get meals. It's not centrally located either so doing sight-seeing is a challenge - you either drive out yourself or pay exorbitant Grab/taxi prices getting around KL.

2. Check-in - I arrived just after 2pm to check-in and one of the receptionists cleverly told me my room was not ready and that I had to wait which I was fine with. He then offered me a room upgrade option of RM200 to Colonial Suite which was readily available but I politely turned him down. Not a moment after declining him, he told me that my room was actually ready for me to access. Very cunning approach from that receptionist.

3. Room & Cleanliness - the hotel room was generally dated despite their best efforts to maintain it. Toilet seat was found to have droplets of urine from previous patrons meaning, the room was not properly cleaned. The swivel chair in my room 607 was found to be stained, a giant no-no especially for a hotel claiming to be "5-star". Hand soap not available at the bathroom sink area, one needs to go to the showering area just to get soap in order to wash your hands. Again, hardly a 5-star hotel layout. Also in their website, we were supposed to get "inspiring" views of the city alas, I was given a disappointing view of someone's rooftop.

4. Facilities - the hotel only has one pool and gym. Pool side, there were only limited seats and some of the towels smelt as if they hadn't gone through proper laundry. Topped with the fact that there is nothing much to do around the vicinity of the hotel, this makes Majestic Hotel one of the most plain and uninspiring places to stay. Again, hardly 5-star.

5. Parking - I stayed at the this "5-star hotel" for 2 nights in total and was utterly stunned when I found out I had to pay for parking. Upon check-out, receptionists named REIYAN and KAVEN charged me RM15 to exit the parking (using my Touch n Go card) but later when actually exiting the gates, I was charged an additional RM30. Dismayed and left feeling cheated, I went back to address the issue. And only then it's when they informed me there is a RM15 per night parking charge, in a parking space that's in the same building, despite having already paid for 2 nights accommodation. I have travelled the world and spent the night at numerous 5-star hotels and never was I made to PAY FOR PARKING, especially being a patron of the hotel itself. I was clearly entrapped and it left a remarkably bitter and sour mark in what was supposed to be a relaxing long weekend staycation. Not even an apology from both REIYAN and KAVEN. Is this the kind of behavior and treatment expected from a "5-star" hotel? I think not.

This is a genuine review, hardly exaggerated. All in all, I will never return to Majestic Hotel and will continue to not recommend this alleged "5-star" hotel to all my friends,...