Aro Palace

Old comunist style hotel, smells very nice, but the carpet in the room is dirty. Minibar has small assortment. You pay extra for everything, parking, breakfast, everything. Not value for money

We stayed two nights in the "old" section of the hotel. We rate it only "accepta ble" for a couple of basic reasons: safety and usability. This is an older luxury hotel, built in the Communist era. Our room had almost no power outlets. None near the bedside tables. The bedside lamp switches were not reachable from the bed. We had to unplug the floor lamp to get power for a CPAP, and unplug the coffee maker to get power for charging electronics. On the safety side, there were no railings on the stairs into the hotel and up to the elevator level. I'm old and wobbly, and won't do stairs without a railing. I could walk the long way around on the luggage ramps (I guess the ramps are a plus). Our room did not have wifi that worked. It worked down the hall, in the restaurant, and in the lobby. But the desk staff was adamant that it worked "everywhere" until one of them came up to our room and could not get a signal to connect. Probably one repeater that was powered down. But they didn't fix it or apologize. We had to tether to our phone, and used half of our monthly data allowance for tethering. On the other hand the breakfast was very good, the bed was comfortable, and the swimming pool -- a real 25 meter pool -- was excellent. There is a new wing on the hotel that may not have the problems we experienced. I understand that the hotel is closing, and will be renovated as a Hyatt brand. I hope they deal with the inadequacies in the process.

The only good thing was that is right in the city center, close to good restaurants and easy visiting anything. Bad: parking for a fee, not particularly friendly staff, is obvious they have never been trained to please guests. The rooms are extremely dated, old and degradate furniture with lots of scratches, carpet with lot of stains, decorative pillows old and shredded, curtains and drapes old and dirty, very bad and cheap pillows, duvet and mattress. Breakfast with cheap canteen food and bad coffee. Useless pool for guests, full of kids who weren't staying at the hotel taking swimming lessons. It definitely doesn't look or offer the services of a 5* hotel, or even a bad 4* one. You can find many 4* hotels that are much, much better.