ibis Almaty Jetisu

Upon checking in my card was charged despite the fact that the all app showed that the amount payable in the hotel is zero. Furthermore, the checking agent wanted to charge me local tax in addition to the rate I paid, despite the fact that the local tax was included in my room rate

During night unexpected hotel telephone call disturbed me around 1 a.m.

Rooms were the most worrying. there was not enough space and also no place to sit and relax except of a hanging chair that looked really uncomfortable. No place to open a suitcase or leave it during the trip. A lot of broken fixtures in the bathroom. And no space to sit at the breakfast buffet. I will avoid this hotel in the future.

I am an experienced traveler and have been traveling to Almaty frequently over the past six years. I stayed for a week at the hotel on the second floor and left unimpressed. It is a mid-level hotel deserving 3 stars at best. The color scheme is dark and the lighting is underwhelming (contrasted to the Novotel Living side of the hotel which was well lit and had much lighter color schemes). The rooms are on the smaller side but functional. A hanging hammock chair is too close to the walls, so you are always bumping the walls. The desk is not adequate for a work space. If you have a small 15" laptop or smaller notebook, the space may be marginally adequate, anything larger than 15 inches and there is no room for reference materials or anything else. The desk is not designed for the road warrior, it appears to be designed to hold drinks and occasional light computer use. The floors did not appear to get cleaned during my stay. For holding clothing, there is an open hanging rack with 6 hangers, there are no shelves or drawers for storing non-hanging clothing. On the positive side, an extra blanket and pillow were stashed in the room. Toward the end of my stay, the power kept failing, I don't know if maintenance was working on something or if it was a city power problem, I suspect the later as the hotel did not make any advance warning of the outages and had several conferences or meeting running at the time. One of my biggest complaints about the room was the noise level. The windows do NOT provide good sound attenuation. Vehicle noise is constant, some women walking with hard heels were easily heard, fortunately nearly all people talking was muted. This is undoubtedly the noisiest hotel room I have had in many years. Additional Services: * Breakfast is adequate with a reasonable selection of breakfast foods to choose from. The coffee machine is OK if you only want hot black coffee or espresso. Anything else is cool and seems to have too much milk/cream in it. * Exercise room is adequate with a few basic machines. * I was greeted as a member with ACCOR status; however, there was never an offer to upgrade the room which is usually part of the status level. I was given a voucher for a free drink. * I sent the hotel an email a week in advance making a request for information and to make sure the room did not have any feather pillows or duvets. I never received a response from the given email address. * I did note that it seemed like somewhere around 10% of the signs on the Ibis side of the hotel were not level. If you don't care enough to ensure signs in the rooms and halls are level, what else don't you care about?

Everything was in line with my expectations, except perhaps only a slightly weird smell in the corridor leading to rooms - but it could be that I have a very sensitive nose.