Sharq Hotel — Hotel in Tashkent

On our recent trip to Uzbekistan we stayed twice at the Sharq Hotel for one night at the beginning and end of our trip.||The hotel while close to the Kosmonavtler Metro station is not really close to anything else e.g Jumanji Restaurant is 0.6 mile away, being surrounded by what appears to be residential and offices. There is however a small supermarket close by.||The room has a mini bar,television, AC, kettle with tea and coffee provided and toiletries in the shower room. However on the first visit no water was provided and on the second visit water and replenishment of the tea and coffee was provided later in the afternoon. The hotel also has a pool which we enjoyed sitting beside during our last afternoon in Tashkent. There is no sink plug and as a previous reviewer has advised, has very hard beds. Certainly the hardest beds of our trip.||The hotel has a restaurant in which we ate in during our visits primarily because in both cases we were leaving early in the morning and wished for an early night. The food is satisfactory though the service is Fawlty Towers. On our first visit we found certain items were not on the menu and we ordered soup on the assumption this would be prepared relatively quickly while we waited for our main course, but in fact after a long wait it all came together. The second time was better. The restaurant and bar do not appear to be well used and had our stay been longer and we had the opportunity to find our bearings then we would probably have eaten out taking a taxi as required.||The main gripe with this hotel and the reason for the average rating is the quality of the reception staff which are either good or very poor. When we arrived I noticed a sign on the desk which gave exchange rates for Som. I asked if I needed a passport to change money and was abruptly told that these rates were for information only and they did not change money. Later speaking to another individual I was offered the opportunity to change up to 50 US$ to Som. It was originally arranged that the hotel would provide a breakfast box as we were leaving early the next day before breakfast was served. However our guide arranged that an early breakfast would provided instead for which we were grateful. However the reception staff had changed overnight and when we enquired about breakfast we were advised in a very arrogant and unpleasant manner that breakfast was not served until later. We protested and after a telephone call, I assume with the manager, breakfast was provided. On our second visit I arrived at the desk at 12pm and presented our passports which were summarily thrown back at me with the advice that check in was not until 2pm. However our driver then appeared and after a conversation it appeared that we could in fact be checked in there and then. It was the only time I was asked to produce a registration slip from our previous hotel. This was the same individual we had had the problem with the early breakfast. I tried to take a note of his name but it was long and not one I could pronounce though begins with an S, perhaps not inappropriately. Later in the day we came accross a French couple who we had seen in the hotel and were tring to find a bank or somewhere to change money into Som. They has been told that the hotel did not do exchange but were given no advice as to where they could go to do this. We had a guess as to who they had probably spoken to. This is completely unfriendly service. We ourselves had used the last of our Som for tea by the pool and I established before ordering a meal that we could pay in dollars or by Mastercard. I was going to use a card but as the charge would have been in dollars I decided I would just pay in dollars. However another unfriendly member of the reception staff advised I could only pay by card. I could not find my original informant but got a manager who advised they were happy te receive payment in either dollars or by card. ||Probaly due to the location I would if staying in Tashkent again go for a more centrally located hotel but certainly the unhelpful members of the reception staff provide a good enough reason to...

We stayed here as part of a tailor-made tour. Overall it was a pleasant stay. The bed was a bit hard but we slept fine. Air-con could be quite cold so sometimes best to switch off and back on again later. The TV in our room did not work but we forgot to report it. There was a kettle in the room (a bonus) but as with many hotels the sachets are not the best so I always bring my own coffee (essential in Uzbekistan as the instant is pretty dire in most places). Bottled water when we arrived the first stay, but not the second. ||||I don't like the notion of having to pay for decent machine coffee (as mentioned by other reviewers), however, when I experienced the terrible instant in other hotels I did have some understanding of why there was a charge. Food prices aren't bad, but a bit pricey. One evening, however, we did not manage to get food (nowhere to eat at Bukhara airport!), so we were over the moon when we found we could order burger and chips at 23:30.||||There is a small shop across the road, however not many eating places nearby (we found one in the park with slow service). To get to other places you have to walk in the residential parts, where there is lack of pavement and lighting, so bring a torch and watch out for the irrigation channels!). Better still, take the metro one stop to Oybek where we found an Irish pub and other restaurants close to the stop.||||I would be happy to use the hotel again, but do your homework and get maps to find the restaurants in...

The main reason I chose this hotel is because of the proximity to the metro station. It's an advantage when you dont need to walk far to reach the metro station which can get you around Tashkent easily. I arrived past midnight and there were quite a number of people who arrived the same time as me from the railway station so check in process took quite some time to complete. I realized I was given a single bed on the ground floor and I asked if I could have a double bed and was moved to the upper floor with a double bed. Was grateful for the upgrade but then the other people on the second floor was noisy you could hear them shouting once in a while along the walkway, so the soundproofing is not very good. Room was decent, pretty big and so was the bathroom. There was an inviting pool which I didn't get the chance to use. The breakfast was pretty good as there were more items on the western side so it was quite intuitive what I was eating though I also spotted the kassa which I liked a lot. It was pretty okay to stay in this hotel, nothing much to complain about and quite worth the value. One of the more reasonably priced hotels you can find within walking distance...