Uvurmongol Hotel
Sukhbaatar district, 7th khoroo, 11th sub district, Ulaanbaatar Mongolia
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About
3.0
#27 of 41 small hotels in UlaanbaatarLocation
4.0
Rooms
3.0
Value
4.0
Cleanliness
4.0
Service
3.0
Sleep Quality
3.0
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Location
Sukhbaatar district, 7th khoroo, 11th sub district, Ulaanbaatar Mongolia
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Detailed Reviews
While not as sleek or modern as their website might lead you to believe (they hired a good webmaster, apparently), Uvur Mongol hotel is a decent old-school lower-midranger that can be good value. It's still largely off-the-grid for both location and online bookings, though that could change. Chinese visitors paying cash appear to be the main clientele (breakfasts in the restaurant also are aimed toward them), and in old maps the location is tagged as the Fushin Hotel, so maybe that's a clue.
My stay was during the July 11-12 Naadam, and I ran into unexpected hassles because of a third-party booking (see more about that below). I'll put that aside, though, for at least the next few paragraphs.
The deluxe room I got for the first night (MNT 118,000) was quite spacious, with a king bed, flat-screen TV and a couch big enough to sleep on. Alas, I was told it wasn't the one I paid for and was moved to a much more cramped MNT 58,000 room. The smaller room had the TV and an efficiency bathroom (toilet and shower shared space). Biggest problem was no mattress per se, just box springs (requested and got some extra comforters for cushioning). There was also no hot water for the first two days because of repairs to the citywide system, but this is a common occurrence in UB.
There's a restaurant, but I didn't get to check it out. Location-wise it's northeast of Sukhbaatar square along a major road in a busy, non-touristy area (best to take a hotel brochure or two with you so you can show the map to the taxi driver). There's a Nomin Hypermart next door for all grocery needs (you can catch up on chocolates from former east-bloc countries, like E. Weidel filled choclates from Poland (try the peach flavor)). There's also a Metro Express for (pricey) laundry in the same complex, and a couple of Internet cafes behind that.
It took 20-25 minutes to walk from the hotel to Sukhbaatar Square or, if you're lucky or patient, you can take the #7 bus for MNT400 from the stop on the main road. The distance is comparable to or slightly better than most options near the rail station. You're nearer to places north of the square, like Khaan Ger restaurant or the National Museum, but farther from restaurants on Seoul Street. At night I took taxis that usually ran around MNT3200 from the square or just beyond ($1 was about MNT 1300).
Housekeeping service wasn't daily, though that might have been affected by Naadam. Overall this is one of those lower-midrange independents that may be a bit past its prime and can certainly be flawed (though usually not in huge ways), but the trade-off is that it can be good value for what you're paying, as it'd be easy to get only about 20% more for twice the cost somewhere else. Unless it's Naadam time or there's some other big event in town you can probably get a room as a walk-in.
Now for the cautionary tale:
If you do a Google search on hotels in Ulaan Bataar (UB) you'll probably run across mongolianhotels.net on the first screen. It's a slick site run by a UB travel agency, Solid Ways Travel, and it lists quite a few UB hotels not listed anywhere else (Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, etc.), especially in the under-$100/night range. Uvur Mongol has its own site but didn't do bookings through it.
My reason for booking online (and probably yours as well) was to guarantee a room over Naadam (July 11-12, though the visitor surge is usually July 9-13, and most hotels will charge more for any night during that time).
So I book over this site well in advance (in March 2013) for the whole July 9 to 14 period at Uvur Mongol at $60/night (in USD, and higher than the normal $45 for the most basic single room outside of Naadam). Credit card charged right away per usual (via a Mongolian bank's payment gateway). The mongolianhotels.net site normally has a lenient cancellation policy, but for Naadam it's strict (no refunds after 4/10). Not great, but in checking availability on other sites, rooms were already getting tight, and mongolianhotels.net listed a number of hotels other sites didn't even have.
Closer to the check-in date, I get on mongolianhotels.net again and book and pay for two additional nights, July 7 and 8, at $45 a night at the same hotel. So I'm arriving (by air) two nights before the Naadam surge starts, and with seven nights now booked and paid for.
Anyway, I get to the hotel late at night, show them the printouts and they're completely surprised and dumbfounded, not only by me being there but seemingly by the whole concept of showing a voucher (though not officially called such) for an online booking! And I'm surprised that they're surprised! The typical customer there was Chinese and paid cash. There was only one English speaker on staff (in housekeeping), and they were worried the hotel wouldn't get paid or that I hadn't really paid for the booking yet (printout wasn't as clear as it should be on that and just had line "Deposit has been charged in full")
This actually dragged on for days, with them asking "When will you pay?" and I having to insist I'd paid already! Got a big room downgrade on day #2, though the new room was probably the size I'd paid for (no mattress, just a box spring, and needed comforters to cushion).
I got the tourism office involved (for language help if nothing else), and one of their very helpful people called the travel agency and asked them to call the hotel and reassure them that I had paid already and the hotel would be paid.
That still wasn't enough to stop the confusion and repeated requests for payment, though, even as the holiday period peaked and they had another customer also on a booking through that site. Finally I went back to the tourism office and the guy spent about an hour calling both the agency and the hotel and insisting the hotel be paid that day. That avoided a confrontation or unpleasantness on check-out from the hotel.
The guy at the tourism office further informed me that I'd never had a reservation that was passed on to the hotel and got the room just because they had it to spare and I had checked in before the peak period.
Thankfully I didn't have to pay out any cash, though the hotel wanted a deposit or to hold my passport and I said no. If I'd had to pay anything after already paying I would have gone the chargeback route, which I didn't want to do and might not have won.
So it appears the bulk of the blame goes to the website and agency operating it. It's not a scam (they have a physical location with street address in UB and people to talk to), and the business model they're trying to develop appears viable. But OTOH the biggest thing promised that I was paying for (a guaranteed prepaid room over a busy period) wasn't really delivered, and it was basically news to the hotel that that hotel had "joined" the site(!!) (The site tagline says "Since 2009 all Mongolian hotels joined us.")
Anyway, they apparently have some real operational issues to overcome before you can be assured of a smooth and seamless kind of experience you're used to getting with Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, etc., and thought I'd be getting when I booked. Hopefully by the next Naadam in 2014 they have it fixed and are on the same wavelength as the hotels, but I'd be wary.
My stay was during the July 11-12 Naadam, and I ran into unexpected hassles because of a third-party booking (see more about that below). I'll put that aside, though, for at least the next few paragraphs.
The deluxe room I got for the first night (MNT 118,000) was quite spacious, with a king bed, flat-screen TV and a couch big enough to sleep on. Alas, I was told it wasn't the one I paid for and was moved to a much more cramped MNT 58,000 room. The smaller room had the TV and an efficiency bathroom (toilet and shower shared space). Biggest problem was no mattress per se, just box springs (requested and got some extra comforters for cushioning). There was also no hot water for the first two days because of repairs to the citywide system, but this is a common occurrence in UB.
There's a restaurant, but I didn't get to check it out. Location-wise it's northeast of Sukhbaatar square along a major road in a busy, non-touristy area (best to take a hotel brochure or two with you so you can show the map to the taxi driver). There's a Nomin Hypermart next door for all grocery needs (you can catch up on chocolates from former east-bloc countries, like E. Weidel filled choclates from Poland (try the peach flavor)). There's also a Metro Express for (pricey) laundry in the same complex, and a couple of Internet cafes behind that.
It took 20-25 minutes to walk from the hotel to Sukhbaatar Square or, if you're lucky or patient, you can take the #7 bus for MNT400 from the stop on the main road. The distance is comparable to or slightly better than most options near the rail station. You're nearer to places north of the square, like Khaan Ger restaurant or the National Museum, but farther from restaurants on Seoul Street. At night I took taxis that usually ran around MNT3200 from the square or just beyond ($1 was about MNT 1300).
Housekeeping service wasn't daily, though that might have been affected by Naadam. Overall this is one of those lower-midrange independents that may be a bit past its prime and can certainly be flawed (though usually not in huge ways), but the trade-off is that it can be good value for what you're paying, as it'd be easy to get only about 20% more for twice the cost somewhere else. Unless it's Naadam time or there's some other big event in town you can probably get a room as a walk-in.
Now for the cautionary tale:
If you do a Google search on hotels in Ulaan Bataar (UB) you'll probably run across mongolianhotels.net on the first screen. It's a slick site run by a UB travel agency, Solid Ways Travel, and it lists quite a few UB hotels not listed anywhere else (Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, etc.), especially in the under-$100/night range. Uvur Mongol has its own site but didn't do bookings through it.
My reason for booking online (and probably yours as well) was to guarantee a room over Naadam (July 11-12, though the visitor surge is usually July 9-13, and most hotels will charge more for any night during that time).
So I book over this site well in advance (in March 2013) for the whole July 9 to 14 period at Uvur Mongol at $60/night (in USD, and higher than the normal $45 for the most basic single room outside of Naadam). Credit card charged right away per usual (via a Mongolian bank's payment gateway). The mongolianhotels.net site normally has a lenient cancellation policy, but for Naadam it's strict (no refunds after 4/10). Not great, but in checking availability on other sites, rooms were already getting tight, and mongolianhotels.net listed a number of hotels other sites didn't even have.
Closer to the check-in date, I get on mongolianhotels.net again and book and pay for two additional nights, July 7 and 8, at $45 a night at the same hotel. So I'm arriving (by air) two nights before the Naadam surge starts, and with seven nights now booked and paid for.
Anyway, I get to the hotel late at night, show them the printouts and they're completely surprised and dumbfounded, not only by me being there but seemingly by the whole concept of showing a voucher (though not officially called such) for an online booking! And I'm surprised that they're surprised! The typical customer there was Chinese and paid cash. There was only one English speaker on staff (in housekeeping), and they were worried the hotel wouldn't get paid or that I hadn't really paid for the booking yet (printout wasn't as clear as it should be on that and just had line "Deposit has been charged in full")
This actually dragged on for days, with them asking "When will you pay?" and I having to insist I'd paid already! Got a big room downgrade on day #2, though the new room was probably the size I'd paid for (no mattress, just a box spring, and needed comforters to cushion).
I got the tourism office involved (for language help if nothing else), and one of their very helpful people called the travel agency and asked them to call the hotel and reassure them that I had paid already and the hotel would be paid.
That still wasn't enough to stop the confusion and repeated requests for payment, though, even as the holiday period peaked and they had another customer also on a booking through that site. Finally I went back to the tourism office and the guy spent about an hour calling both the agency and the hotel and insisting the hotel be paid that day. That avoided a confrontation or unpleasantness on check-out from the hotel.
The guy at the tourism office further informed me that I'd never had a reservation that was passed on to the hotel and got the room just because they had it to spare and I had checked in before the peak period.
Thankfully I didn't have to pay out any cash, though the hotel wanted a deposit or to hold my passport and I said no. If I'd had to pay anything after already paying I would have gone the chargeback route, which I didn't want to do and might not have won.
So it appears the bulk of the blame goes to the website and agency operating it. It's not a scam (they have a physical location with street address in UB and people to talk to), and the business model they're trying to develop appears viable. But OTOH the biggest thing promised that I was paying for (a guaranteed prepaid room over a busy period) wasn't really delivered, and it was basically news to the hotel that that hotel had "joined" the site(!!) (The site tagline says "Since 2009 all Mongolian hotels joined us.")
Anyway, they apparently have some real operational issues to overcome before you can be assured of a smooth and seamless kind of experience you're used to getting with Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, etc., and thought I'd be getting when I booked. Hopefully by the next Naadam in 2014 they have it fixed and are on the same wavelength as the hotels, but I'd be wary.
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Date of stay: July 2013Trip type: Traveled solo
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LOCATION
MongoliaUlaanbaatar
NUMBER OF ROOMS
48
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