Novel Hotel City Center — Hotel in Abu Dhabi

Hmmm mixed emotions for now... the welcome was not as good..no smiles, no welcome feeling... it's my first night will see how the rest of the stay goes....

So after my stay i have the below comments and i added one extra star rating:

GENERAL FEEL OF THE PLACE -once inside the hotel you can not even tell its knee deep in the busy city center of Hamdan street which i really liked!!!!

SERVICE UPON ARRIVAL we did not receive the best of welcomes. I arrived at around 6pm so i assume the front desk agents were tired or something...

ROOMS our room was nicely made up and really felt clean. We had such a super nice cleaner named Idrees. He was so polite and helpful. We asked for extra water, towels etc, he was so nice about it. I recommend he be rewarded for giving such excellent service as opposed to the front reception service received. The second day of our stay we got back to our room and it was again freshly made up and all our possessions in the same place. This was impressive! Thank you Idress.

BATHROOM Unfortunately the bathroom is now old. the tub had some scratches not as welcoming to have a soak in the tub. the most disappointing of all was the plumbing system of the room. I am not sure if the problem was with our room or its a structural issue of the whole hotel as a hole. The water pressure for the shower was so weak, hence you could not enjoy the shower, in addition the draining was not good. You had to wait a bit in the tub for the water to drain out completely. On a plus note the shower gel smelled divine.

SWIMMING AREA I enjoyed this area the most. We went there and there was noone else so we had the whole pool to our self. The life guard on duty Haneef was also super nice. When we arrived he explained to us about the pools depth and advised us to keep to the 1m side. In addition he was always alert when either one of us went in for a deep, ready to save the day if need be :)

RESTAURANT/BAR On the last night we went to the restaurant located in the 5th floor. The welcoming lady was also nice and welcomed us, however she then passed us to a colleague of hers who i assume was the waitress on duty. That waitress service was appalling, we were the first to arrive in the restaurant, but it appears we were the last ones to be attended to comparing to the other tables. Probably this was a classic case of stereotyping but never the less we had fun. The AED69 deal is worth trying also!

OVERALL I would be happy to visit the hotel after some time to see if there have been changes made by the management and could feature in more detail on google maps for future clients the owners might...

Worst ever Hotel to use in Abu Dhabi 1)no parking, even paid parking not available more than 4 hours , 24 hours paid parking is far away from the Hotel and you need to find someone to help you with the baggage 🧳 2)wifi almost not working, extremely slow to open email 3)Gym is opening at 8am and closing @7pm , so if you are travelling for work, good luck to your excercise 4)Furniture is heavily used and need to be changed 5)TV is not working

Update 8th Sept 2022,

While I appreciate that Mr. Lee spent sometime to reply to my comments in which I shared my experience in Novel Hotal City Center, I would like to highlight the following:

1. WIFI fixed just yesterday @ 8:45 PM, so I stayed two days in the Hotel with no WIFI, so please be careful if you are travelling for business you should be equipped with high data in your Mobile. Additionally, I believe the time Mr. Lee spent replying back to my comments was enough to fix the issue of WIFI. 2)Mr. Lee is replying back to my comments in caps. and I do believe this is not the correct way to reply your customer. 3)Novel Hotel Management expecting the customers to keep calling the front desk to fix the TV, WIFI, finding a parking …etc, instead to relax and rest after long working day, while other hotels in Abu Dhabi are going extra miles to serve you beyond your expectation up to Wooow level. 4)My Recommendation not use this Hotel in case you are using your car or rent a car as they will not support you with Parking. 5)Quality of Furniture, Be careful the King Size Bed is just two attached single beds and covered on the top, so Please take care of your back and Quality of sleep, Check the picture I attached. 6)While I am using the Gym (I adjusted my business schedule to use the Gym before it close @ 7 PM) I noticed that kids less 12 years old are using the gym which is really not safe for them, @ Mr. Lee please check the Cameras in Gym for the date 7th Sept 2022 from 5:40 PM onward and please be sure keep the kids of you customers are safe because unfortunately, Gym instructor was busy on his mobile. Unfortunately, it was very bad experience to me using Novel Hotel City Center and I am strongly not recommending to...

The main reason for my 10 points for Novel Hotel can simply be closed in one word: SERVICE. Let me provide an example: for some reason, the room which I booked originally wasn't available the first night. This might happen and even if the staff tries to avoid it, what else one can do if it just happens? The team showed proactivity, so before I commented upon this, they already had a solution to offer: to move me to another upgraded room the day after and let me spend the night in another one. Also when I went for a desert safari, they let me take the hotel towel with me. My baggage was kept there with no extra charge. Also after the first night, when I was supposed to work online, the breakfast was brought to my room. How could I complain about the lack of availability, if I saw so much initiative from their side? I had a feeling that all employees were trained to be proactive and offer guests solutions before they complain. Later in my private talk with the reception manager, this was confirmed. This is also the reason why the hotel survived during the challenging COVID-time: they won customers not with their pricing strategy, but with service and overall satisfaction. And I am now happy to add another 10 points to the Novel Hotel. Special thanks to the reception team: Mustafa, Ian, Glenn, the manager. Also waitresses and chefs from the restaurant. Also, I was impressed with how much customer care was shown by Idrees, the housekeeper. It shows that all teams and departments here are on the same board and work together towards the same goal. Well done, team!! I have already booked another stay cause this experience must be repeated! Here I am neither a tourist nor a customer. I was a guest and I felt the hospitality from people's minds, not from hoteling schools. Food = simply amazing, no words. The best and my favorite: Indian pickles. Recommended to everyone! Best regards from Pawel, a guest...