Being a frequent traveler I usually try to book a hotel, which is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World. In August I needed to go to Doha, Qatar, and booked a (“premiere”) room at the Grand Regency Hotel Doha, which has become a member in 2006. After my two nights there I still have to ask myself how this hotel managed to receive The Leading Hotels of the World membership. What did The Leading Hotels of the World think when they admitted the Grand Regency Hotel to its “esteemed luxury hospitality organization”.
OK, fair enough, I had a roof over my head, a bed, a bathroom and the service and food was OK. However, ‘OK’ is not what you would expect from a LHW member hotel and this hotel has nothing that parallels the standard 5* luxury and comfort of other LHW I have stayed at. (By the way the Grand Regency Doha is rated 4* as per Qatar hotel standards; it is also a “dry hotel”, i.e. no alcohol is available at all on the premises, not even in your room’s mini-bar). The furniture and amenities in the hotel are simply cheap and look used (and the hotel is not even open for 1 year). The hotel rooms are tiny (I wouldn’t book a room for 2, it can get very cramped; after I complained about the size of my designated room, I was shown some other rooms, which weren’t really bigger).
Don’t be fooled by the marble lobby: all in all the Grand Regency Doha offers 3*/4* hospitality standards, but is branded/brands itself as a 5*+ luxury hotel, which it is not at all. Every other manager/owner of a ‘real’ Leading Hotels of the World member hotel, who puts a lot of effort and money into achieving/keeping/exceeding LHW 5*+ ‘standards’, must be offended when seeing a ‘sister-property’ like this. The Leading Hotels of the World really made a bad move, an unacceptable mistake, when admitting this property to its ‘prestigious’ member list. Mistakes like this tarnish the entire LHW brand and the reputation of other member hotels. Thanks to the Grand Regency Doha, The Leading Hotels of the World is about to lose its credibility as a serious luxury hotel representative organization.