Palais Shazam & Spa

Firstly the good stuff. Excellent location, walking distance to the buzz of the Medina without being noisy once you’re inside the hotel. Feels safe. The pool area downstairs is festive, if run down. Hamid is an amazing staff member at reception. Very accommodating, sweet and helpful. This is where it ends. I am shocked that the place has all 5 star reviews and such shining photos, which is in complete contrast to our experience. When we arrived, we were shown tired and sub standard rooms. The place is run down and not at all like the photos on various reviews 1. Firstly, no one answers the phone! We had so much trouble trying to get through once we had booked because we wanted to add an extra person. 2. A major problem upon arrival was that they don’t accept credit cards! No one told us that while booking, and we were surprised by this information upon arrival. They finally said they will accept PayPal but that is a very expensive option. They added 5% to the charge. 3. When we got to the room we found that it was not only run down, but there were several issues: - The air con could not be moved down from 29degrees. Admittedly they sent someone straight away to look at the air con (we had to walk down 3 levels and back up again before it happened). Then we were told off by the guy for not changing the mode to cool! How are we supposed to know? And if they are expecting guests in 30 degrees heat, should they not cool the rooms accordingly? - shower was cold, blocked and the dirty water overflowed on the floor of the bathroom. They tried to fix it but couldn’t. - Cleaning is not exactly a priority. - Non existent toiletries but that’s not a major issue. 4. Breakfast - orange juice was good and Hamid was really nice when serving. However the bread was generally stale, crepes hard and when we asked for another cup of coffee at breakfast, we were charged for it. 5. Very poor quality beds/mattress. All in all a very poor quality accommodation. Maybe they have better rooms but what was provided to us was terrible. I have attached pictures to show what we got.