Hotel Rysy — Hotel in Štrba

I've just returned from a ski trip with a couple of friends in The High Tatras. My boyfriend and I booked the room months ago - we paid 240 Euros for one week of accommodation, halfboard included.||||PROs: clean, large room with balcony (we had a room with forest view); the cleaning service is available daily, free of charge (you just have to leave the sign on the door on your way out); affordable massage service - 5 Euros/ 20 minutes (the masseuse is infact a man; personally, after a long day at ski I was expecting a rather muscular relieving massage, not a cuddling one :) ); the hotel provides a discount card for AquaCity Poprad Resort - a must visit while your stay. So much for the pros.||||CONs: Since we paid so little for this trip, we didn't have the highest expectations BUT we expected the staff to speak at least English (only one of the 4 receptionists spoke English well, not to mention the waiters and waitresses). The food at halfboard is extremely repetitive - we ate tons of potatoes in all possible and impossible forms (we tried the a la carte menu one time and it was far better than the halfboard). There is a wellness center at the hotel but we didn't have the courage to try it - we went to the Aqua City Poprad resort.||||The daily trip to the ski was nice - there is a train station nearby the hotel (Tatranska Strba). The one-way ticket is 1 Euro/ person, therefore we spent 2 Euros each for the tarin ride (it reaches a first plateau in 10, 15 minutes). From the train station (Strbske Pleso) there is a free bus that took us to the slopes- max 5, 10- minute ride. The last bus from the slopes to the Strbske Pleso train station is at 16:10 PM, do not miss it - the last train Tatranska Strba leaves from Strbske Pleso at 16:52 PM.||||We went shopping in Poprad 2 times during our stay - sweets and other stuff so we could vary our daily menu. We spent about 80 Euros/ 2 persons and the food and water was enough for a whole week, taking into account that we also made sandwiches for skiing. We did that because we were rather tired of the fast food menus at the ski bars on the slopes. Then again, we loved the garlic cream soup they serve there - 2,5 Euros/ soup. ||||We bought ourselves ski passes for 3 days: 78 Euros/ person and afterwards we bought ski passes from people that resold theirs (a one-day ski pass is 28 Euros and you can buy it at 15 Euros at 12 o"clock if someone wants to resell it).||||All in all, the trip...

In my over 20 years of travelling on business and 45 years of travelling for pleasure, I have never come across such a terrible hotel. The funny thing is, that before I booked it, I read many of the comments and then decided to book. Afterwards, I have come to the decision or the realization, that the far majority are just plain lies or are added by the hotel itself. Some comments about the XXXX.|I booked the hotel through Hotels.com and have only excellent comments about their service, assistance and help that they gave me throughout this ordeal. After a few hours, I called them to cancel the rest of our stay (2 rooms for 5 nights). After speaking to the hotel twice, they managed to cancel the booking with no fine or penalty. But, when I checked out, the manager tried to get me to pay 50% for the other 4 nights. Well, I don’t speak Slovakian, but my tone of voice was warning enough not to mess around with me. At the end he relented only after I told him that I am going to complain to the Slovakian Ministry of Tourism.|We arrived at 15:00 pm and had to wait for about 20 min before anyone came to the front desk.|The people were highly unfriendly and hardly could speak English (or German or Dutch or French). Besides the 5.4 million Slovaks – how many others speak Slovakian? I try and respect local cultures, but there is a limit!|The hotel was not clean, and this is an understatement – the walls were filthy, the carpets unclean, the shower – a breeding place for bacteria.|The towels that we were given were hand towels (or dish towels) that had seen far better days – filthy, raggedly and something that no hotel should have on its premises! When I asked for decent ones, all they could say was later … (never got them by the way).|The shower had free run of the floor – water everywhere with nowhere to go – a living nightmare.|The room was hot, no AC! (21 century no?)|Breakfast was inedible – unhygienic I would say. Even the coffee was not hot.|I am concerned that many of the hotel sites are accepting comments from the hotels themselves and not “real” guests. I am shocked at the amount of fabrications and dishonesties to be found. Us netizens need...

It was an awful experience. ||The staff were very unfriendly, nobody spoke English at the reception desk. As soon as we came we were demanded to give our passports, even from children, then told all the data are for the police (why?!?), then the children were told to sign the papers (come on, they are not old enough to sign anything!) ||We had a 2-night stay, the hotel charged extra money for so called "beginning of the season". Which season on the 1st of July if it's a skiing resort?!?||Find yourself a decent place, which is definitely NOT THERE!!!||The room was cold and not very clean, some of the rooms had wires staring from the wall, the staff said "it's OK, just telephone wires, don't worry", the water in the shower does not go away, stays in the tray. But since we spent not much time in, we didn't even try to switch the TV on - no comments about it but the fact there wasn't a fridge was disappointing. The blanket and the pillows looked as if they had lived thier life off a long time ago.||The waitress at the restaurant was a witch. The omelette for breakfast looked and tasted as if someone had already chewed it for a while, there were some weird spots on the cheese which turned out to be mould, when we showed it to the waitress she shrugged her shoulders, took it to the kitchen, then brought the tray back having removed just a few obvious pieces.||The children were not offered any drink at the dinner, after our call-down they brought a jerrican of something liquid, put it on the table...