Grand Hotel Moika 22 St Petersburg — Hotel in Palace District

I have mixed feeling about the place. It has a great location for sightseeing. It is a stone’s throw from Hermitage. You can see it from some of the rooms facing the Moika river. ||||The breakfast is good (nor as good as it used to be). Nice selection of foods, good quality, attentive service. In the past they used to serve Roederer champagne, now it is some cheep local bubbly wine. And so long and so forth. ||||The cheapest rooms are on the small side. ||||Poor sound proofing in general. You can hear people talking in the corridor when they are passing by your room. You can hear noise from the room next door as well. Soundproofing of rooms is non-existent - walls must have been made out of cardboard. I have tried to complain at the reception. I was shown 5 rooms which were worse or as bad as mine, so I did not move. No attempt of apology or trying to resolve my issue - when I was departing the hotel on the last day I was given some small chocolates which were supposed to sweeten the pill. I thought this was rather pathetic. ||||There is some design problem with a/c. You can get very hot or very cold. I opted to switch it off completely, which was not a 5 star experience. There was too much humming noise from the ventilation outside - so keeping the window open was not an issue. ||||Overall, I see a massive deterioration in service - I have been a loyal customer for years. The soundproofing was an issue during my last stay as well. Having said that if you think about what you are paying in EUR these days (my rate was circa EUR130 per night), one should not complain or expect too much (in the past it was more given the FX rate). ||||So mixed feelings but next time we would...

Dear Mr. Zaglmann, Over-all we do love the Kempinski at Moika 22. Our return to STP had a lot to do with your hotel and the way it is staffed with very nice and real service oriented people. I am sure it is your talent to hire pleasing and nice personnel for the Beau Rivage Brunch room where we enjoyed the finest hospitality 3 Years ago when Elena was the Maître ‘D and equally hospitable Anastasia at our recent stay between 10 April to 22 April 2018. Also among all the fine servers Anastasia & Valeria were exceptionally attentive. Kudos to Alina, the red dress person for her computer assistance.

Now some small brick bats for possible improvement; from the 19. April the espresso coffee has not tasted nearly as good as before. BTW wherever we travel default for the best espresso in the world we find McDonald restaurant’s is the tastiest. However I realize that “gustibus non est disputandum”. The Concierge service person Christine (dark haired young lady) has sent me into the Metro system with my painful legs saying that the stairs are all escalators. Not realizing that a person with a handicap not only thinking about the major escalators into the bowels of the underground but the many series of smaller set of stairs we encountered at the Metro station. I actually did ask her just prior, what makes her qualified for her job, to which she said; living in STP. I did observe at most places there is almost no facilities or consideration for Handicapped people, from which finding I consider, that most places are not handicap friendly and in Russia those people are expected and...

I had to review my rating to a lower one. Here is the list of impressions from the hotel:

The good: excellent lication, very good check-in experience, nice building and charming rooms. Restaurant on the top floor (Bellevue) with a stunning view of the Hermitage the church of spilled blood all the way to the Hazprom skycraper. The concierge who gives great suggestions.

The average: breakfast (little selection for thos expecting a big buffet, great for those conscious of food wastage in hotels), the gym with treadmills on which the TV connection stops for 10 mins, then restarts randomly.

The bad: the queen size bed duvet on a king size bed .ade out of 2 single bed mattresses (one person will have to sleep without duvet) the room service (they only make the beds, don't even give you new bottles of water or empty your trash bins), the answer to the closed jaccuzzi ("may take 2 or 3 days before it reopens"), the doorman inviting us to get into a normal taxi for 7 tines the price of the Uber we took back to the hotel after dinner (when we asked the doorman before taking it if the price from the driver was Ok, we got a "you know prices are up and down in St Petersburg" as an answer)

Morality: this is probably closer to a Conrad quality than a...