Balcona Hotel & Spa — Hotel in Đà Nẵng

Bad service and bad customer experience overall.

The reception staff doesn't listen well to the clients requests. They don't show if the requests are understood or not, and I need to repeat many times.

I asked 4 key cards to one staff. After I have said all the numbers, the receptionist talked to a colleague and asked me to repeat the number again.

I called 3 times the reception by phone from my bedroom to just have toilet papers. After 30 mn I still didn't receive the toilet papers and had to go out meeting my group. So I don't know what time they delivered the toilet papers.

The gym is very hot when I first entered. Nobody was using it so I guess the hotel was saving energy by not opening the AC, which is understandable but but you open when open the AC, it takes time to cool the whole gym. There is no towel provided in the gym. When I asked a staff, they answered that I could go get take one at the pool. It would have been appreciated if the staff went take the towel themselves for their clients.

The swimming pool rules are ridiculous. They are not allowing accompanied children to be in the big pool which is only 130 cm deep even if the child can swim. COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS. In the photos I am sharing there are two rules. They say that the one on the top are canceled. The one in the top says that children below 12 can go to the whole pool if they are accompanied, and the big one on the bottom says only children above 140 cm can go to the deeper pool but accompanied. In my opinion, if they want to replace their rules, they just need to remove the whole paper and replace with the new ones instead of keeping the two papers. Additional EDIT: Right after I sent this review, I saw a toddler wearing flotties on each arm playing with her dad. The pool attendant told the father that the toddler had to go to the babies pool. The baby is safe and would be accompanied by her father the whole time. Why can't they play in the whole pool ? This is ABSURD!

Additional EDIT: 10 mn after I have sent this first review, the attendant allowed me to bring my daughter to the 130 cm pool. Although it was nice from him, does it mean he can just override the rules as he wants ?

Finally about the swimming pool experience, the JACCUZI DOES NOT WORK ! I don't know how long it hasn't been working but I wouldn't

We cannot have a second card of the hotel room. So it's inconvenient when you need to separate and come back to the room at different times. I don't like to disturb the receptionnist to get the key cards and we need to wait/queue until one is available. Such a waste of time.

At breakfast, I didn't see where the coffee/tea station was, so I asked a staff if I could get a coffee. She answered if I wanted to order coffee. Then I asked if there was no coffee for breakfast, she then showed me the coffee station. A better service would have been to prepare coffee and serve the clients.

My wife did a massage in the hotel's Spa yesterday afternoon. She pretty enjoyed the experience and wanted to do a facial in the evening last night after a diner in a restaurant near the downtown. She whatsapped the phone number they have on the flyer and made an appointment. She booked a massage session for 9:30 pm for 2 people: herself and my brother. When she arrived there at 9:30, it was all dark. The spa was already closed and the person who answered my wife said that they have another massage shop at 5 mn from the Balconia. This is NOT HONNEST. My wife was upset as anyone else would be in this situation. Of course she didn't go there and came back to the room and sleep. Today she did a facial + another massage. Total time was supposed to be 1 hour and 45 mn. The masseuse stoped at least 10 mn before the normal time. They agreed to let my wife pay for 1h30mn instead of 1h45mn. Her experience went from excellent to DON'T GO THERE anymore.

The management should inspect their premises and improve/upgrade them and as well as their rules and procedures. If they don't see any problems, then they are...

TLDR; please book other newer and better hotels around the area, look at the Google reviews instead of Agoda reviews. This is at most a 2 stars hotel. If you don’t believe me, look at the other reviews, all the complains are aligned.

I’m currently writing this at 8am, awoken by construction drilling in the hotel. Called the reception multiple times, drilling will stop for 5 minutes and begin again. Reception blamed it on guests. Please tell me which hotel guest will be crazy enough to drill into your hotel’s walls. Book at your own risk.

Pros:

1. staff are friendly
2. the location is right in front of My Khe beach
3. cool pool
4. booked this place due to amazing reviews from agoda for my mum’s birthday. Upon providing identify proof (they requested for passport proof) they kindly brought up a cake to celebrate.

Cons:

1. old hotel, stingy on amenities. The shower gel and shampoo has a very pungent smell, it is as if they were there since eternity. There isn’t even any hand soap, we had to wash our hands using the smelly shower gel, and bought our own hand soap in the end. Toothbrush and toothpaste are only provided upon request, for a 4 star hotel? Seriously?

2. There isn’t even a rack in the shower to put your shampoo/ body wash. You can visibly see the old markings of the rack being patched up.

3. walls are thin, you can hear the guests along the corridor and they weren’t even being loud.

4. the room’s door was so old I had to pull on it, make sure I hear a click before heading out. Also we booked the twin room but was only given 1 room key card. Requested for another but they denied our request, citing policy.

5. for a 4 star hotel I would expect bottled water to be provided, which they did, two 335ml bottles per day, you will be charged if you request for more.

6. breakfast was terrible. Good variety and spread, but please save your stomach space for the much better alternative cafes around. Everything was overcooked, the pancakes were dry, the yoghurt was coagulating, maybe it’s a Vietnamese specialty but I don’t think so and it just seems like they don’t care at this point.

7. very old hotel, I started coughing and sneezing constantly from the second day onwards.

8. Gym had 2 treadmill, 1 cycling machine and a few dirty gross looking dumbbells. Don’t trust agora’s review. It may be a 4 stars hotel based on 1990s standards. But it’s 2025 now...

First day of Our stay at Balcona Da Nang 2-5/5/25

Positives Great spot directly across from the beach. room size Location across from beach

Unfortunately only city view rooms were available when I booked so I would not be enjoying the view from my room however I was hoping the rooftop pool and city view sunsets from my balcony would make up for it.

Negatives - Construction next door- Sadly we were given a room on the 5th floor directly looking out over major construction (ie: directly behind)happening on the next block. I called reception and asked whether we might be able to either change to a higher floored room or even upgrade to something not looking over construction . I was told no other room was available until tomorrow and if I wanted to change then I would need to check out before 12 and go back in at 2. We declined as it wasn’t worth it for 2 days.

One Key Policy- We asked whether we could get a 2nd key as there were 3 of us and and may go out separately and we also wanted to charge some items and keep a few things cool in the fridge however were told that hotel policy is one key only however if we want to leave our key in the room we could ask reception to come up and let us in - this sounds fine except when you want to go to breakfast or any other floor like pool or spa you need to then ride down to reception to ask to be let in your room which is extremely annoying.

Pool towel policy - We visited the pool for an evening swim and the pool guy gave us towels however advised us we could lot take towels back to our room and had to dry off and leave it there. 🤷‍♀️

Late night construction - we came back to our room and at 9pm at night and construction continues and I’m thinking may continue thru the night . The noise is not too bad thankfully.

Balcony furniture - Another 2 small annoyances would be that there is no balcony furniture - lucky there is no reason to be out there right! Haha

Bedside Lamps - and last but not least the room has 2 bedside lamps both of which are unable to be used due to the fact that the lamp plugs are too loose in the PowerPoint so I am unable to use them at all and need to have the main lights on all the time.

Wish I’d stayed booked at the Grand Lotus it looked amazing in the way in even if it’s not right...