Ixora Hotel Penang — Hotel in Penang

For people who wish to book this hotel when they’re planning for a holiday in Penang please read all the bad reviews first before anything else. I wish I did because it was a terrible experience for me, my families and friends. Days before my arrival, I called, emailed & chat through their website portal but receive zero reply. 15 minutes before my arrival I called again to confirm if my booking was still secured and the receptionist replied yes and ask for my eta. (Thursday) Upon my arrival, I was told that the room I booked (4 bedroom suite) was sold out. Then the staff who attended to me his name was Hery just left me with no explanation and went back to the office. Minutes later the manager (I didn’t get his name) came and told us the 4 bedroom suite was under maintenance and want to compensate us with a VIP suite with only 1 ensuite bathroom. FYI, we got 4 families how is it even possible to have 8 adults to share only 1 bathroom. After the long wait they managed to come out with a solution. We were given 4 separate hotel rooms on the same level. We proceeded with that as it was already 7.30pm and we were exhausted. We requested for extra towel. 1st call, we were told that the staff will come and send but after 20 minutes of waiting, we made 2nd call and the receptionist apologised and told us the staff will come and send the towel. Almost an hour of waiting we made the 3rd call and was told that they run out of towel. We can only get a fresh towel tomorrow morning. Ridiculous. Their customer service was really bad. (Friday) The next day we went down for breakfast as we paid for it and was stop at the restaurant counter as our individual room doesn’t show that it includes breakfast. 1st they messed up our rooms now they didn’t have the initiative to inform the restaurant about what had happened yesterday. Fyi, all 4 families were stop at the restaurant counter. After knowing what happened to our booking. My friend who booked the same hotel as us came at 9.30am to double confirm that their room was secured as they plan to check in late and was told by Abel (receptionist) it’s secure and they will reserved the room at level 5. When we came back to the hotel at around 10pm, Abel told my friend that the room was sold out. How can it happened again! They simply did not learned from their mistakes. They charged for the rooms but there’s no rooms available. After waiting for almost an hour they gave my friend a pool access room. Manager (Jaya) did not even attend to my friend he simply leave Hery and Abel to settle the situation and both of them were just silent and did not even able to answer any of our questions. Zero apology. (Sunday) It’s our last day and we still face the same issue during breakfast. I am never coming back to this hotel. Terrible customer service. Even the bell boy told us that last week 13 people face the same...

Staying here was like an adventure, you’ll never know what’s next… 😂 Stayed here from 22-25 Jan. Took the family room and was given a room at level 11, requested for a room change after 10 minutes due to the condition of the room. Molded ceiling, glum of hair in my kid’s room, stain on sheets, dusty floor… thankfully front office gave us another room at level 3. Slightly better but certainly not anywhere near a 4-star property. As we were about to sleep 12am, the aircon started to leak in one of the room. Called up maintenance and got it fixed after about an hour. That’s 1am by the time we can sleep again. The following evening while my wife was coming home with my kid, she was denied entry to the carpark and was told even the valet parking was reserved for an event. It was raining profusely that night and my wife had to drop my kid and drive out to get her own parking. In the dark under the rain. This was when I requested to speak to the duty manager when I got back. Unfortunately duty manager was nowhere to be found and provide no explanation even until we left. (They reopened the parking after my mini drama at the front office. In fact, I was teaching everyone there about guest management free of charge)

Coming from the hospitality industry myself and being there for Ixora’s opening when they first started years ago, it is sad how bad the property is currently being ran to the ground. Here are some of my 2cents if anyone at all from the management team is reading the review.

Get your GM to start addressing to some operation issues highlighted in guest reviews and stop displaying him like a peacock Retrain your housekeeping team as that is fundamental and easily addressable Start clarifying the logs from your duty manager, as far as I am concerned there was none Get your priorities right with your internal team, in-house guests should not be told to find their own parking away from the property while you reserved all slots for some MICE events (if you let your sales managers dictate your operation, you will live to see your own property closure)

Hotel management is not rocket science. You need to be really special to...

Nice, comfortable hotel with good facilities, good location, good service and parking facility. However breakfast spread has limited choice, almost the same choice of food served every morning and tastewise below average. Sometimes finished food was not replenished immediately. We usually went for our breakfast at around 9am and sometimes some of trays only had remnants. The room is quite spacious, well-lit and well -provided with the basic necessities. However I was given the Room 311 which I think had not been occupied for quite some time as there was an odd smell in the fridge and it took many many hours for it to get chill. There is also the awning roof of the gym right below my window, so there is hardly any view. The worst part was during my 3 night stay, it was raining heavily on 2 mornings (around 5am) and the noise of the rain on the awning roof was my wake up call. It was very noisy. The bathroom is pretty spacious but the shower area was pretty stained and the water pressure at the shower was low. Another uncomfortable issue was there was a stench smell coming out from the toilet bowl, especially every time it was flushed and it didn't seem to go away... sometimes it was quite unbearable that we sprayed some air freshener around the whole bathroom. We did get the housekeeping to go and clean but what he did was spraying lots of Dettol around the whole bathroom which made the situation even worse with the strong Dettol smell coupled with the stench smell. Anyway the politeness, hospitality and friendliness of the staff made our 3 nights staycation very enjoyable as most of our time was spent at the hotel..Thanks to Mr Nizi, Nadaraj and Levon and the staffs (sorry didn't get their names) at the Straits Cafe for your kind hospitality. We also love the lovely, welcoming, comfortable and quiet Library Lounge with its wonderful spread of snacks and drinks. And not forgetting the lovely poolside and the surrounding sitting areas. They are amazing and fitted the purpose of our...