Sport

Another cavernous hotel in Ashgabat with that sense of ex soviet “don’t care” customer service. Overall comfortable and (randomly) well appointed. You should get enough towels, tea making facilities, toiletries and lights that can be put off at night, but have a lot of patience and time if you need to chase reception and house keeping for any of these things (which you will), and don’t expect to get water in bottles. There should be a safe, and tv but no English speaking channel except a Chinese one. Breakfast is a bit of a bun fight if the hotel is busy. You can get plenty of revolting sausage like meat and cakes but choose carefully and you will find nice plain yogurt, eggs, salads and seasonal fruits. The best thing is the proximity to the shopping mall which provides endless entertainment beyond shopping such as hosting glitzy weddings and a food hall with some excellent and extremely good value food outlets. We struggled to spend $10 for two people, on wonderful lentil soup, fresh salad, bread, kebabs and a drink (not alcoholic of course). Not worth looking for city restaurants.

Location is fantastic, across street is the big mall with lots of options of restaurants to eat, shop or just do people watching with good AC. Big spacious room with lots of space, strong AC, TV lots of channels, big bottle water in room, mini fridge, tea pot with two teas, lots of closets and drawers but no hangers to hang cloths which was very odd. Breakfast is buffet and was very poor compare to this luxurious fancy big hotel. Only one sort of bread to eat, only one sort pastry. It has coffee tea, a woman making omelet , cheese, salads, some veggies, local food, fruit, etc etc. Hotel has a roof top 9th floor where you can eat or drink and enjoy the glorious view of Ashgabat. Ashgabat is beautiful and shining at night . We had great time here and would love to come back again!

The room smelt like toilet. I had them bleach the toilet but the smell didn’t change. It turn out to be the water smelled. I had the room changed. The next room was smelling like cigarettes. So I had to change the room Again. There was no bath Mat, no hungers. However, the reception people were nice and accommodating. WiFi was slow.

Monumental like all three hotels we experienced in Turkmenistan, this hotel maximizes these features; moreover in line with the grandiloquent character of the urban neighborhood in which it stands. Notwithstanding that the quality of the buffet breakfast could be better in relation to the level which the hotel aspires to (and this happens in all the hotels we have experienced), the breakfast is still better here than elsewhere. Furthermore, the wifi works acceptably. The rooms are elegant and functional, as are the bathrooms. In the lobby there is always at least one person who speaks reasonable English; this too is not obvious everywhere. It's also possible to access, on the ninth floor, a terrace which offers an exciting view of the city, especially at sunset, when streets and buildings light up in various, changing colors. There is also a good restaurant on the roof, named Beijing (which I reviewed separately). In short, this was certainly the best of the three hotels we encountered in Turkmenistan.