Memory Central Hotel & Spa — Hotel in Hà Nội

We stayed at the Memory Central Hotel & Spa for 2 nights prior to taking the bus up to Sapa. We had 3 more nights booked on our return but decided to cancel them & stay elsewhere.|I don't really like leaving negative reviews but I feel it's important to share the experience, both for the hotel & for other prospective guests.|Let's start with the positives:|- Excellent location, not even 5 minutes walk to all the bars, restaurants, & shops of the Old Quater. 10 minutes walk to Dong Xuan market, 15 minutes Grab to Train Street. |- Good value. Very fair price, but then accommodation is generally good value in Vietnam.|- Quiet. Despite being on the main road, the hotel was well insulated & little noise from outside. |The negatives:|- Check-in took about 20 minutes waiting for someone to attend to us. People sleeping on setees, empty beer can on the table in reception, generally untidy. Access is down a narrow alley that feels a bit seedy. |- Room. Once we got checked in, we went to the room & found it quite dark & dingy, a window facing out onto another seedy alley. Hard bed & not much space. |- Basics. We'd been travelling all day from Sarawak so we went straight out for some beer & a bite. It was pouring with rain & the hotel had no umbrellas for the guests. |- The wrong room! At this point we'd decided we wouldn't come back here on our return to Ha Noi, so I went to Agoda to cancel. That's when I realised what was troubling me, something had felt wrong about the room from the start. I'd booked 30m² with balcony, what we got was around 15m² with a window to a seedy alley! I raised this with the hotel on our return & all of a sudden, his English not good. Lots of shrugging shoulders & playing with his phone. Eventually he gave us another room that was much bigger, still no balcony but at least a window with a brighter view. We travel a lot & although not everything looks like it does on the website, this is one of the few times I've been given a dramatically inferior room to what I booked. |So yeah, not for us. Great location & value gets it 2 stars, but we won't be coming back. I have to admit having '& Spa' in the name is...

Someone mentioned there are fake reviews here, and I agree. It’s my first time in Hanoi so I picked a hotel in Old Quarter. UNLIKE the advertised “new” hotel, this hotel is extremely old and dilapidated. The photos online are not what the place actually looks like. Add 20 years of bad maintenance and you get the right picture. There is so much trash everywhere, including the abandoned furniture on the ground floor. There is also dust everywhere and some insects inside my room. The tiny elevator uses a pin code but some buttons are broken. The receptionist CHARGED ME MORE THAN THE BOOKED AMOUNT because he said there is an extra 3% for credit card payment. It’s so shady how they do business. I didn’t want to book for another hotel at night so just gave him the extra 3%. There was no shampoo or soap, and the receptionist said that they must have been stolen by the previous guest. He said he would bring me new ones but totally forgot about the whole thing. And then he went eating noodles at the reception desk while at work. When I went downstairs to ask for the missing items after a long time of waiting, he was so scattered and didn’t know what he was doing. The towels look very old and unhygienic. (How much is a new towel? Can’t you replace them?) I’m glad I brought my own. The room size is also not as advertised; it is much, much smaller than what they stated.

Overall, the place is barely acceptable. I wouldn’t come back and I don’t recommend anyone exploring Hanoi for the first time...

We initially had a great impression - the receptionist spoke excellent English, was friendly, and kindly allowed us to store our bags before check-in. We also appreciated the early check-in (meant to be at 2pm but room was ready for 12:30pm).

However, things quickly went downhill. The reception area had a musty smell, but as we went upstairs, the corridor smelled even worse and felt foggy - a definite red flag. When we got to our room, we found mould on the ceiling, and both the duvet and bed were damp.

We immediately returned to reception to ask for a refund, explaining that we couldn’t stay in a mouldy, damp room. Instead of apologising, the receptionist offered us an upgrade (which we declined) and then defensively pointed out that we’d booked a budget room, implying that poor conditions were to be expected. As budget backpackers, we’ve stayed in plenty of cheaper rooms that were in far better condition - clean, dry, and mould-free. Being on a budget doesn’t mean accepting unhealthy or unsafe conditions. This hotel also claims to be four stars, which makes it even more disappointing.

Overall, we were shocked by the way the staff handled the situation and by the lack of any apology. Based on our experience, I would not...