The Ghion Hotel is long overdue for redecoration. The carpets in the rooms are well well overdue for shampooing - they brought to mind the carpets of my Woodbine-smoking grandfather's house. The rooms generally are a bit depressing. It is a shame really as the hotel has other things going for it: a good location, a sunlit restaurant and reasonably quick wi-fi (pre-paid cards). But the hotels real great asset is the 50m swimming pool next door which is also open to the public for a fee; great for a high-altitude workout. It is much less crowded than other hotel pools - being colder and at 50m more of a challenge for the average Ethiopian. Do use the lockers (available for a nominal fee). Do be careful on some of the nearby streets - pickpockets using distraction tactics are an issue. The hotel has safety deposit boxes and I would urge people to keep credit cards and surplus money there.

I didn't mind the well-dressed, quiet prostitutes sitting in the bar area of an evening, though their burly Russian clients were somewhat unprepossessing. However, the main street just outside the hotel grounds is a dangerous place to venture if you value your possessions, especially your smartphone. Mine was grabbed in broad daylight from a zipped bag, while my brother had his stolen the following evening from his shirt pocket. Our tour company (Ace Cultural Tours) made no mention of this street's very bad reputation, though all the locals seemed perfectly aware of it.
The hotel itself is a perfectly good mid-range hotel, though the refurbished rooms at the front are far superior to their shabby counterparts at the rear. Attractive public areas on the ground floor, and several shops, including a rather shambolic duty-free outlet. Don't walk the streets, get a taxi.

The Ghion takes you right back to the time of the communist hotels of the Cold War. It´s old-fashioned and over-priced (93 $ for a double room). The rooms are shabby, the carpeted floor in our double room was dirty. There were fleas in the bed, but the bathroom was ok. Breakfast was only average. Most annoying was the staff: extremely unhelpful and unwilling to show any commitment to their job. When we wanted to pay the bill, they refused my creditcard ("machine doesn´t work") and demanded an exchange receipt from the bank if I pay in birr (nobody else wanted to see this receipt on our 14-days journey through Ethiopia). It´s incomprehensible why so many foreigners still stay at the state-owned Ghion hotel while Addis has quite a few good, reasonably priced, privately owned middle class hotels by now. The only good thing about the Ghion is the huge and beautiful park in the city center of Addis (which is not open to the local people - like most other parks in Addis).

We stayed here with a tour group and agree with everything that has been written. What I should like to add is a warning to travellers who wish to walk outside the hotel. There are gangs of kids who target farangis (foreigners) for pickpocketing, seemingly controlled by older boys. in the 20 minute walk from the Ghion to the Hilton we were targeted 4 times. The boys have boxes or magazines in their hand and sidle up to people, jostling and have succeeded in stealing wallets and passports from pockets. We managed to spot them having been warned and once they know that they have been rumbled they move off. I shook a walking stick at them which kept them at bay. An older man spat on my husband's trousers with the intention of having his accomplice pick his pocket but we did not allow him to succeed. Of our group of 12, the majority were targetted in this way. Please leave valuables and passports in the hotel, either in the reception's safe deposit box or like us, locked in a suitcase. Alternatively, take a taxi to wherever you are going. This is not representative of the rest of the country which is beautiful and comparatively safe.