OUR RATING: NOT WORTH IT
It’s 9am and there are men hanging on ropes outside our bedroom window peering in at us while we sleep. They’re just window washers, but it would’ve been nice if someone from the Novotel Hotel in Kota Kinabalu had let us know they were dropping by. I would’ve put on my pretty nightgown or gotten dressed at least!
John and I are all about backpacking, but we also enjoy staying at nice hotels when we can afford it. This trip to Kota Kinabalu was a short trip, so we decided to live it up a little and stay somewhere nice for a day or two before we set off on our sea and jungle adventures. With that said, we were still looking to save a little money and that is why we chose to stay at the Novotel. It was one of the few nice hotels in Kota Kinabalu that didn’t have construction going on (or so we were told), they offered a free tour, free breakfast, free Internet and an additional free night. We had never stayed at a Novotel before, but after our first night in Kota Kinabalu, we are pretty sure that we won’t ever stay at a Novotel property ever again.
Here are a few other things that left us feeling cold about our stay at the Novotel:
*No one told us that there would be people hanging outside our windows at 9am in the morning.
*No one told us there was construction going on near the swimming pool.
*Our bathtub was streaked in grime and didn’t drain properly. I ended standing in eight inches of water for my shower.
*The food was terrible. The hotel buffet breakfast was cold: sausages, potatoes, and eggs were all slick with cold congealed grease. When John asked the chef for a fresh omelet, the chef pointed to a lone congealed omelet on a plate and said, “Help yourself!”
*No one could be bothered to give us any information on car rental agencies in the area. We stopped by three times to speak with someone and were finally told that we should just book online. What’s the point of having a concierge if you’re going to tell your guests to do it themselves? (At Le Meridien, someone helped us rent a car within ten minutes of our arrival.)
*One of the perks of this package was supposed to be a wildlife tour. We were picked up at the airport by the hotel tour guide, and he seemed really nice and resourceful. He handed us a brochure and told us to pick our tour. We started getting a little excited to see our choices, and I commented that the tour more than made up for the price of a $80 USD room. Alas, when we got to the hotel, we were told that we would be picked up the following day at 9:20am. We asked where we were going and they told us our tour was a trip to the zoo! We asked the clerk to take us off the tour list as we weren’t interested in going to the zoo. It wasn’t a big deal and we weren’t disappointed until we received several phone calls the next morning urging us to hurry up and get downstairs as the bus was going to leave without us! That’s when we noticed the men washing our windows and having a good old gander at me in my undies. Lovely.
Workmen's Ropes Outside our Window
After our first night there, John and I talked about staying on for the additional three nights. We decided we wanted to cut our losses and move on. We explained our disappointment about the room and the services, and told them that we didn’t want an upgrade, we just wanted a refund on our credit card so that we could move on.
The management asked us to stay for an extra half hour while they investigated the problems. We ended up going back twice to find out if they could refund our credit card for the remainder of our stay. That half hour stretched into an hour, and by that time, we were absolutely furious that we had already wasted half of day of our vacation dealing with hotel issues. The manager offered us a room upgrade and we figured we could spend the rest of the afternoon having a few drinks and lazing around by the pool for a few hours. That idea went kaputch when we got to the swimming pool and found out that not only is it under construction, but a family that was having lunch in the shade had also reserved all the sunbeds. There was nowhere for us to sit, the pool staff told us we should have reserved two seats, and that’s when we decided to cut our losses and get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak.
We both found it really ironic that Novotel is in the same price range as Le Meridien and the Hyatt. The attention to detail and the level of service that we received at Le Meridien (our next destination) doesn’t even compare to the Novotel. In fact, if I had to compare the two, then I say that Novotel had no guest service to speak of.
Despite how awful our first night was at the Novotel, we still ended up paying full price for our first night there. The way we were treated at Novotel made me angry enough to write to their headquarters. When we heard back from them, they literally had an excuse for every complaint we had.
Well, they say first impressions make a lasting impression. I can say with 100% certainty that we will never ever stay at the Novotel ever again.
