Silk Road by Minyoun — Hotel in Samarqand Region

This is probably a fine place for business people. It is NOT where you want to stay if you are visiting Uzbekistan and want an Uzbeki experience. In fairness, it is a Chinese hotel brand, and the facilities are beautiful. Spacious room with a view of the manmade water features in what is essentially a business park. ||It is a long way from the city, and other places in the business park are not even walking distance due to the manmade lake that would require a cab to get to the closest non-hotel restaurants in the business park (you can see the area with these restaurants, but the water feature is very long and there is no bridge across). ||There were a few oddities. The breakfast was good, but the coffee from the 3 "espresso maker" machines (which seem to be high end machines) was not even drinkable. Right out of the machine, it was lukewarm and mostly milk. It's probably just not set properly. But all 3 machines? I guess they are tea drinkers :). ||They do not seem to get many English speaking guests. Nobody seemed to speak English at all, in fact. ||Service at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel was actually terrible (going elsewhere would have required a long cab ride to and from). We ordered 2 soups and 2 mains. After 10 minutes, the first soup arrived. 10 minutes later, the second soup arrived. Then another 20 minutes before the main dishes arrived, and one of them was not even what we ordered (or wanted). It tasted like mid-range American Chinese food. ||The gym was good, and my wife enjoyed the spa, but we would not recommend this hotel for a traveler visiting the city...

We are so happy and satisfied with this hotel until the day we checked out. We were accused of taking the laundry bag which is worth 300k Uzbek SUM. I went up with 2 staff and it turned out it was in the drawer all the time (the funny thing is I never even touched it.) I don’t blame these 2 staff as I know it is their responsibility to make sure nothing was missing/stolen (though next time it would be appreciated if they can check it more thoroughly.)

What truly pissed me off is the attitude from another female staff at the reception named Zarifa. From the moment we checked out, she just looked grumpy and when my friend said “we never used it”, she reacted with “I am sure you did” in a very rude way! Even later on, it turned out to be in the drawer in the room, she was not even apologetic (the other 2 staff at least said “sorry for the mistake.”

This is one of the 2 five star hotels in Samarkand and I just hope what we paid at this hotel is equivalent to the amount of respect you show to your customers. The hotel really NEEDS to put more training in your staff’s service.

By the way, we had a really nice chat with another staff named “Firdav” at the first floor bar (if I remember his name correctly, he is tall and bit skinny). He had worked in Hilton for 2 years and the professionalism and politeness he demonstrated is just another level. PLEASE LEARN FROM HIM THAT HOW A STAFF AT 5 STAR HOTEL SHOULD BEHAVE AND TREAT...

We are so happy and satisfied with this hotel until the day we checked out. We were accused of taking the laundry bag which is worth 300k Uzbek SUM. I went up with 2 staff and it turned out it was in the drawer all the time (the funny thing is I never even touched it.) I don’t blame these 2 staff as I know it is their responsibility to make sure nothing was missing/stolen (though next time it would be appreciated if they can check it more thoroughly.)What truly pissed me off is the attitude from another female staff at the reception named Zarifa. From the moment we checked out, she just looked grumpy and when my friend said “we never used it”, she reacted with “I am sure you did” in a very rude way! Even later on, it turned out to be in the drawer in the room, she was not even apologetic (the other 2 staff at least said “sorry for the mistake.”This is one of the 2 five star hotels in Samarkand and I just hope what we paid at this hotel is equivalent to the amount of respect you show to your customers. The hotel really NEEDS to put more training in your staff’s service. By the way, we had a really nice chat with another staff named “Firdav” at the first floor bar (if I remember his name correctly, he is tall and bit skinny). He had worked in Hilton for 2 years and the professionalism and politeness he demonstrated is just another level. PLEASE LEARN FROM HIM THAT HOW A STAFF AT 5 STAR HOTEL SHOULD BEHAVE AND TREAT...