City Seasons Suites Dubai — Hotel in Dubai

Stay away!!! Check in was a disaster. So already off to a bad start. We arrived at around 6:30pm and the room they said was still being cleaned. The lady at the Reception asked us to sit down and wait until the room opens up. Magically within 3 minutes the room was ready and we were checked in. Had booked a 2 bedroom suite with a kitchen as there were 4 of us. That is what we were assigned. We get to the room and find that the kitchen area is inadequately stocked. There was just 2 coffee cups and 2 bowls. Even what they had were not part of a set but random sized cups or bowls thrown together. Again rather strange. Was not expecting posh crockery, but is it so hard to find a set of 4 or 6 of the same kind? Most importantly, there was a big gaping hole where the fridge was supposed to be. We had planned on doing some grocery shopping and stocking the fridge. I went down to the reception and complained that there was no fridge in the kitchen. The lady at Reception just shrugs her shoulders and suggests that the fridge may be out for maintenance. I ask her why did she assign us a room without a fridge and got no reasonable answer to that. By this time not even 20 minutes had passed since we checked in. The front desk had made 6 attempts to charge my credit card the entire amount for the 5 nights we were going to stay. My credit card company ended up blocking my card as they suspected unusual activity. Obviously this was a huge nuisance and irritation. I did not have a local phone number in Dubai, so I complain to the Hotel Manager about this. Most hotels that I have been in wait to charge you until you check out. Not so at the Pearl City Suites. They tried to charge my card (6 times) a few minutes after I checked in for the entire stay. Such a dodgy outfit.

I wanted to call my credit card company in the US to sort out the matter. I could make a collect call and I ask the Hotel Manager (Ali) to make a call from the hotel phone. His response is he is not authorized to make international calls from the hotel. I tell him that he has caused me a major inconvenience by having my card blocked and I needed to get it sorted out. He offers me his personal mobile phone to make the call. I try calling the US phone number to my credit card company and there is insufficient balance on the phone of the hotel manager to make the call. So essentially within 20 minutes of checking in to the hotel they managed to give me a room without a fridge and block my credit card and left me with no option to fix these issues. I had to find an internet connection, log into my Credit card account online and sort out the matter with my card being blocked. We spoke to a Maintenance man who said that he will look in storage to see if he can give us a replacement fridge. This arrived in about an hour. The fridge that was brought in was not clean. Moreover the freezer door was falling apart and I had to find some special ways to keep it from staying open. We had to wait around for the fridge before we could go Grocery shopping to buy some supplies for our stay. The room was not cleaned properly and there were many marks on the floor where it had not been swept. The electrical outlets (too few) were in awkward places mostly and not convenient. Bathrooms were somewhat clean. The light switches in the room were rather strange. Hard to figure out what operated what. The elevator doors always seemed to close too soon. The only music we heard for the entire 5 days that we stayed at the hotel in the elevator was one particular song of Kenny G. Atleast on a couple of days we had to wait until 6pm and a couple of reminders before the room was cleaned. Overall Pearl City Suites is a hotel you should give a miss. They are completely clueless on how to run a hotel. The staff is completely incompetent and incapable of keeping...

Overall- a decent place to stay, which could quite easily be made into a top of the range destination with the cons listed below being amended. The staff are not at all to blame, as they are clearly well intentioned, but serious changes need to be made before this place can be recommended, and the fire safety changes need to be made as a priority.

Pros

Fairly central location, with quick access to the metro system and a supermarket.

Nice staff, who are very helpful. A particular shoutout to the housekeeping team, Thisara and Sourab.

Cons.

When I put the washing machine on for the first time, there was a massive leakage from a pipe behind it, which flooded the kitchen. They did solve it temporarily, but it shouldn’t have been like that in the first place and it took another attempt to fix it permanently (incidentally, the fix was just filling a hole in the pipe in the kitchen wall with sealant, something that could have been done the first time it was reported)

Glass on dining room table was warped in one place, and it was very sharp and potentially dangerous. I nearly cut my finger on it as I didn’t initially notice.

Bathtub has rusted bits on it.

Paint and sticky labels still left on multiple switches and bits around the room

Dated decor- maybe some people will like it, but it doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a top of the range place.

No provision of free laundry capsules or dishwashing equipment as is usually provided in aparthotels (even just one washing machine capsule and a sponge/scourer would be acceptable)

Water pressure in shower quite low, so you can’t use the shower head when detached from the main holder, making the shower head being movable completely pointless.

Cold water stops running and becomes warm water after a few seconds on both the kitchen and the bathroom taps. This also means you can’t have a drink of water from the taps, and therefore forces you to rely on bottled water that the housekeeping team provides. If the hotel is going to maintain eco credentials, it needs to sort this out and provide cold or room temperature drinking water from the kitchen.You can’t drink the tap water, as you can’t

Also, as an environmental measure, it’d be nice if the housekeeping team didn’t just replace any soap unwrapped or toiletries every single time they had been used, as it is unnecessary. Instead, some sort of list of toiletries and other provisions(including new towels etc.) could be given by the housekeeping team to each room occupant every day, and the occupant can fill it in with what needs replacing. This would save the hotel money and save the environment.

Fire alarm would go off fairly regular for a few seconds, but then would just turn off. There needs to be, for safety reasons, an explanation of whether this is a drill or not, what times drills are conducted, and a fire alarm in all sections of the suites. The fact that none of this is in place is a major hazard, particularly in Dubai where flammable cladding is so...

The whole experience was disappointing and culminated with a rat in our room. First of all, even though we arrived around midnight, they kept us waiting for an hour and then told us that one of the two rooms we booked had some issues, so they’ll offer us the biggest apartment to share and will move us back to the rooms the following day. This never happened, but we were offered complimentary breakfast for the whole stay, even though we were supposed to get it for solely one morning. I guess they forgot about changing the rooms, the breakfast thing and our rooms supplies, such as towels, soap, shampoo, toilet paper etc., not to mention other stuff that a 4* hotel should provide. We had to call or go downstairs for them at least for the first few times. Also, most of the times we called at the reception, it took ages for them to answer and when they did, they confirmed they would solve a certain issue and then never did. The hotel is quite old and not recently renovated and is pretty dirty. The room looked like nobody had stayed in it for ages, the sink wad clogged, the bathroom smelled like urine and the corridors and the pool area were dirty too. I didn’t notice if they cleaned our room throughout the 5 days. More than that, the kitchen plugs were so stupidly build in the walls that you couldn’t plug the kettle or microwave into them. The kitchen was also dirty and I noticed a small bug at some point. However, all of these were bearable and we conforted ourselves with the thought that even though the conditions were not at all for a 4* hotel, at least we paid little money. The peak of the iceberg was the last night when a rat crossed the room and climbed into the wardrobe. We screamed our lungs out, called for the hotel staff, who came to catch it and moved us to another room. The next morning, when we went to complain, the other receptionist had no idea about the incident and the mamager kindly asked me not to write anything about it on the internet because as he said, the rats were brought by the Africans and Filipinios. He also sais they didn’t find any rat at all. He offered us a discount, after he wanted to offer a complementary breakfast which we already had or a lunch/ dinner even though was our last day. The stuff is not to blame, but they are not managed well and the client service was bad. Johnattan...