Vistana promised a lot... but delivered less.
Upon...
Vistana promised a lot... but delivered less.
Upon arrival, the confusion arising from the fact that asiarooms.com requests your credit card details but doesn't process the payment led to a stressful check-in process. Using our business debit Mastercard, Vistana charged an amount in excess of our hotel stay, which we expected would be just an authorisation but was in fact withdrawn from the bank account. This saga continued at check out time, when they tried to suggest they would charge the exact amount of the stay to the card again and then process a refund for the original amount (which could take up to 2 weeks to appear back in our account due to an archaic manual process).
Aside from the billing hassles, we were assured that our room was non-smoking and sent to 1528, which proved to be a smoker's floor, complete with ash tray and matches on the desk. The bathroom was not particularly clean, but liveable - just not what I'd expect from a 4 star hotel.
After we discovered that the room was a smoker's room, we requested relocation. The room we were moved to was 1110, and it overlooked the bus station. We initially agreed to this because we weren't overly concerned about the view as we'd be out of the hotel all day. What we didn't realise is that the windows have such poor acoustic insulation properties that every sound from the (noisy) streets below carries straight into the room. It seems bizarre that a hotel aiming to be 4 star has overlooked such a fundamental facet of their building.
My final complaint is the 'restaurant' on the ground floor. Complimentary breakfast really isn't worth taking up - coffee is luke warm, 'porridge' is inedible, cereal options are only high-sugar 'kids' cereal, and the only other options are curries, rice, noodles prepared to a pretty average standard. And the 'service' is VERY average...
So all in all, a fairly disappointing stay.
