Hotel Leopold I — Hotel in City of Novi Sad

I wonder if the hotel is preparing to go out of business. Management and staff do not seem to care what guests are experiencing and reputation doesn’t seem to matter. During the two days I was at the hotel I encountered two people in customer facing roles at reception and one server at breakfast. That was it for visible staff. ||--Three cars were parked in the hotel lot at 9 am the day I checked out …. a Monday in August. Where are the tourists? And the business guests?||--Emailed the hotel twice in the week preceding my arrival and once while a guest. No response. Each email went to the address on the hotel’s website. And twice I submitted messages with the website’s contact form. The only message after clicking submit was a small window saying ‘use our webform for contact.’ ||--Without being able to make a reservation contacting the hotel directly I became a walk-in at arrival. Reception offered a rate about one and a half times more expensive than the same ‘room and view configuration’ on booking.com||--Unheard of. Every hotel at which I have stayed during my fourteen-country trip through Eastern Europe has given me a better deal than otherwise available when I reserved directly with the hotel. ||--Receptionist promised to email a room rate and in/out date confirmation and did not. When asked again for a confirmation she snapped ‘why do you want that?’ The guest standing nearby looked at her like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And that apparently finally got her to produce a confirmation email. ||--Hotel offers cable TV channels on its website, for my room category; at least as recently as the morning I checked out. In my room, TV channels were scrambled – only partial frozen images with patches of color moving at times. That means the subscription is not being paid. At check in I asked the receptionist if there were English language news channels. Her response: “The hotel is old, and we have to take care of it.” I told her I saw the satellite equipment attached to the building bearing the name/logo of the supplier. She lowered her head and stared at her keyboard.||--Different receptionist the next day refused to give me a hotel business card when I asked for one and subsequently refused to provide the general manager’s name and email address. ||--From my stay of four years ago I remembered staff inflexibility and indifference. This time there was hostility. Questions and requests received reprimands.||--On their website’s page entitled ‘our top offers,’ there were none when I looked today.||--At breakfast one server was on duty, and she could not speak English. Only with the help of a guest seated nearby who spoke both Serbian and English was I able to order breakfast and have the order understood and correctly delivered. ||--Closing the window’s curtains in my room meant stifling the circulation from the air conditioner located right above the window and behind the curtains when they are drawn. Room was too warm as a result. Or the option is to leave the blinds open for an early daylight wake-up call. ||--Furniture was jammed into available spaces. Difficult to move around the bedroom and small adjacent sitting area. It was usually necessary to move furniture to navigate through the bedroom.||--Bathroom in room 128 was so small that bending to sit on the toilet seat meant banging my head on the...

I wonder if the hotel is preparing to go out of business. Management and staff do not seem to care what guests are experiencing and reputation doesn’t seem to matter. During the two days I was at the hotel I encountered two people in customer facing roles at reception and one server at breakfast. That was it for visible staff. ||--Three cars were parked in the hotel lot at 9 am the day I checked out …. a Monday in August. Where are the tourists? And the business guests?||--Emailed the hotel twice in the week preceding my arrival and once while a guest. No response. Each email went to the address on the hotel’s website. And twice I submitted messages with the website’s contact form. The only message after clicking submit was a small window saying ‘use our webform for contact.’ ||--Without being able to make a reservation contacting the hotel directly I became a walk-in at arrival. Reception offered a rate about one and a half times more expensive than the same ‘room and view configuration’ on booking.com||--Unheard of. Every hotel at which I have stayed during my fourteen-country trip through Eastern Europe has given me a better deal than otherwise available when I reserved directly with the hotel. ||--Receptionist promised to email a room rate and in/out date confirmation and did not. When asked again for a confirmation she snapped ‘why do you want that?’ The guest standing nearby looked at her like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And that apparently finally got her to produce a confirmation email. ||--Hotel offers cable TV channels on its website, for my room category; at least as recently as the morning I checked out. In my room, TV channels were scrambled – only partial frozen images with patches of color moving at times. That means the subscription is not being paid. At check in I asked the receptionist if there were English language news channels. Her response: “The hotel is old, and we have to take care of it.” I told her I saw the satellite equipment attached to the building bearing the name/logo of the supplier. She lowered her head and stared at her keyboard.||--Different receptionist the next day refused to give me a hotel business card when I asked for one and subsequently refused to provide the general manager’s name and email address. ||--From my stay of four years ago I remembered staff inflexibility and indifference. This time there was hostility. Questions and requests received reprimands.||--On their website’s page entitled ‘our top offers,’ there were none when I looked today.||--At breakfast one server was on duty, and she could not speak English. Only with the help of a guest seated nearby who spoke both Serbian and English was I able to order breakfast and have the order understood and correctly delivered. ||--Closing the window’s curtains in my room meant stifling the circulation from the air conditioner located right above the window and behind the curtains when they are drawn. Room was too warm as a result. Or the option is to leave the blinds open for an early daylight wake-up call. ||--Furniture was jammed into available spaces. Difficult to move around the bedroom and small adjacent sitting area. It was usually necessary to move furniture to navigate through the bedroom.||--Bathroom in room 128 was so small that bending to sit on the toilet seat meant banging my head on the...

No, this hotel was not good. I made reservations online. The reservation process was easy and straight forward. I reserved one of the classical suites located in the first floor. These are the most expensive rooms. ||The rooms are dated. The bathroom is not good. The sink does not have enough space to place the essentials. The most expensive rooms do not have showers; they have a jacuzzi instead of a shower. Honestly, it is difficult to take the morning bath in a jacuzzi. You don't feel clean. There are no curtains or glass windows. It becomes messy with water. The essentials provided by the hotel are not good quality. The shampoo and the bar soaps are not good. ||Once the jacuzzi is hot, it is very difficult to stop the water from running as the faucet that controls the hot water gets stocked. |The rooms are very noisy at night. The jacuzzi cleans itself over night and the noise is terrible. You have to disconnect the jacuzzi. If the night is cold, you need to turn the heater on and the heater is noisy as well. ||The daytime front desk staff is nice and they speak very good English. At night, they have some senior interns who don't speak English and who are not nice; they don't want to help. |Breakfast is mediocre. Coffee is terrible. There is no fruit. Breakfast menu offers some greasy eggs and sausages. The morning waiter is nice. Room service and menu is bad. When you order meals, you have to remind them to bring silverware as well. ||Carpet is old. Furniture is old. The rooms are cramped. Bed mattress is ok. It is an old hotel. ||The good features are:||1. Parking is spacious and free.|2. There are nice views of the Danube river. |3. The hotel is located in the Petrovaradin fortress which is one of the most interesting sites in Novi Sad. It is not far from Novi Sad downtown (20 minutes walking distance).|4. The price is high for the quality it offers; however, when compared with similar hotels in other parts of the world or even in Serbia, the hotel is not too expensive. |5. It is not massive. It does not feel crowded. ||I recommend exploring some of the new and modern hotels in Novi Sad. Their prices are similar, they have showers, rooms are more spacious, quiet, and...