It is with the enchanted memory of my stay at the Meridien Saigon that I continued my Vietnamese journey to Hanoi where I made my home for a few days at the Sheraton.
The hotel is in the city but on the outskirts of the center, by a lake.
The city center is close and can be reached on foot in about 20 minutes. But I don’t recommend this option: except for the last third of the trip which goes through the old Hanoi and which is worth its picturesque side, you will spend most of the trip slaloming between the cars parked on a not very wide sidewalk while avoiding to be knocked down by the ones on the road. Neither pleasant nor interesting: the cab is necessary.
An outdated club room
With its “fake old colonial” style the lobby is not unpleasant at all.
The welcome at the reception is cordial and I am told that my “classic” room has been upgraded to a “club room”. The bare minimum knowing that my platinum status gives me the right to access the club lounge anyway but a certain stinginess because given the size of the hotel I am surprised that no superior room or suite was available. The hotel was well filled but mainly by busloads of tourists and as far as I know it’s not group travel that fills the superior rooms.Some stinginess on the application of the loyalty programthat reminds me of my previous stay in Japan.
I notice that the interior fragrance, which is the signature scent of the Sheraton brand, is very present, more than usual. I’ll finally understand why they overdid it a bit later.
I go to my room.
The latter is a good size but the “fake antique” style furniture looks really dusty and old.
The bathroom is also a good size and has a shower and bathtub.
But again it looks old. Besides, the faucets are leaking.
As for the bath products, they are available in small quantities and renewed sparingly. If you are in the habit of taking two showers a day (which is necessary in this type of climate) be prepared to ration your shower gel.
The view on the lake and the pool is not bad at all.
A short video visit to finish.
Conclusion: a spacious room and a nice view from the upper floors of the hotel but that’s about all I’ll put to its credit. It doesn’t look good and we can’t say that it’ s a pleasure to live in this room.
A limited range of restaurants
I will start with an aperitif in the club lounge. It is quite large and offers a very substantial buffet.
It is rather successful even if in quality it does not equal the Meridien Saigon.
It was while testing the hotel’s restaurants that things went wrong.
The hotel has two restaurants, a buffet and a more upscale restaurant offering French cuisine.
The buffet is located directly in the lobby.
Every evening it was stormed by groups so I never ventured there. By the way, do you remember my comment about interior fragrance? Obviously his interest was in masking the scent of food from the buffet. You don’t necessarily pay attention to it at first but it becomes annoying in the long run.
So I fell back on the French restaurant. The place looks pretty good.
The menu is interesting and the dishes well executed.
As for the service, if it was globally good at the beginning, it went downhill at the end. Slowness, forgotten dessert order…. This is one of the limitations of the Asian hotel industry: an extremely friendly and helpful staff but sometimes a lack of training and a limited mastery of English which means that they spend their time saying “yes yes” with a friendly face while they have not understood anything about your request.
The hotel also has a bar which is actually a huge joke. It’s more like the nightclub of a old decrepit vacation club.
It is empty and gloomy.
I’m still looking for the vodka in the tiny vodka tonic I was served.
I will not take my usual bloody mary and for good reason: it is not even prepared by the bartender but they just put some tomato juice with a premix. A shame in a 4 star hotel.
Facilities from another age
Let’s take a tour of the hotel’s facilities.
The gym is large but equipped with equipment that was certainly used during the French colonial era given their age.
A good point: located in front of the swimming pool, it is a bright room and open to the outside.
On the other hand bad experience with the staff. A young staff member in charge of reception felt obliged to stand 1m away from the clients while they did their exercises. Surely it was a good thought, in case the customer had something to ask but powerfully annoying. It will be necessary to raise my voice so that his manager comes and tells him that he could very well watch the room from his seat at the reception and apologizes for this excess of zeal of a young recruit.
But going there is like a treasure hunt. There is a very simple way to get there by going through the lobby and the convention center and down a few stairs. But it’s not the one that’s signposted: to avoid customers walking through the convention center when it’s in use,guests are invited to take circuitous routes through a maze of corridors. It overly complicates things, and furthermore, the experience of walking the halls is most unpleasant for a reason I’ll mention later.
The large pool is very pleasant (when it is not raining).
The hotel also has a tennis court…the picture speaks for itself.
As for the spa, frightened by the overall state of the hotel’s facilities, I did not venture there.
I’ll finish by explaining why it was so unpleasant to walk through some of the hotel’s corridors.
It smells really musty
Some areas are outside and therefore not air-conditioned. The same applies to some of the corridors that lead to the spa and the gym, for example. The areas in question are wallpapered and, more importantly, carpeted. How do you think paper and carpet react in a region where the climate is hot and very very humid? Badly. A real torture if you have a sensitive sense of smell.
A conclusion to this stay could have been that it smells musty (figuratively speaking)…. except that it really did, literally.
Conclusion
An article written in pain so much to remember this stay, fortunately short, brought back bad memories. An experience to forget and a hotel to renovate from top to bottom or to raze.Certainly one of my worst experiences of the year with theWestin Miyako Kyoto.
See you again ? Want to bet?
The photo album is available here.
The grades
Room: large, nice view, but clearly outdated. 6
Restaurant and bar: a very decent lounge, a good French restaurant with sometimes disappointing service, a dismal bar and a buffet that I did not visit. 6
Check-in/out: smooth, efficient, attentive. 10
Facilities: Old, bordering on dilapidated in some aspects. 4
Experience for money: Vietnam is not an expensive country but locally the Sheraton is an expensive hotel. At 100 euros a night it is not worth it. 3
Service and attention: good service overall, always attentive, but sometimes insufficiently trained staff unable to manage the relationship with foreign guests. I almost strangled the waitress in the restaurant and the trainee in the fitness room. 6
Application of the loyalty program: in a rather stingy way. 5
Hotel: Not badly placed but not ideally well either, it looks older than its age. 5
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