Almaty Grand Erbil Hotel

I originally booked this hotel because I wanted somewhere inexpensive near the airport. That it's about 15 minutes away from the airport is one of the few good things I can say about this place. The other things are that the breakfast is surprisingly good, and the staff were at least helpful (we had read comments about some staff trying to scam tourists, which did not happen to us, at least.) I'll leave out issues like the TV not working, or the fixtures being poorly installed.The main issue with this place is the cleanliness, or lack thereof. The first thing you see in the room is the many suspicious stains on the carpet. The bedding had holes, and the bathroom had hair all over the floor. The toilet doesn't really flush, instead only dispensing a steady trickle of water. The bathtub is slow to drain. To top it all off, we woke up in the morning absolutely baking because the air conditioning was completely insufficient to cool the room once the sun came up. The hotel is inexpensive, but it still feels like extremely poor value because of everything we had to put up with.

What's good? Location near the airport, good breakfast, big room. What's not good? Rooms were not cleaned unless you ask for two consecutive days. Faulty flush and aircon not working at room 412

Breakfast is luxurious, did not expect such amount for a budget hotel. However, for improvement, I advise to provide heating facilities for the food such as microwave oven. The location is far from the city center but the superb bus services provide seamless connectivity to the city center. The location is also close to the airport, accessible by bus number 33 and 41. The room service is also commendable, they did not forget to top-up my coffee, tea and sugar, and even replace my towels and clean the toilet. However, guests are to be reminded that they will enter your room to do those, even though you hanged the 'do not disturb' label on your door knob, which I think is not acceptable. The receptionist is not particularly friendly, never smile, but he can understand and speak english well. However, be mindful if you have some disputes and try to discuss with him, he may not entertain you or pretend not to understand you, which I found very rude.