We chose this hotel because of its affiliation with the W hotels. Our expectations, however, we a little too high.
Arrival
We arrived late at night - after midnight, after a long 14 hr journey from Australia. We had made sure to request a non-smoking room and an extra bed for our son. In return we got a smoking room and had to wait 45 mins for the extra bed, even though we had requested at t he time of booking 3 weeks earlier and also checked by email that it was going to be done (which was confirmed in a response).
The room
- Comfortable, very well sound proofed despite the fact that the hotel is in the middle of a construction site. You can't hear a thing.
- No fresh milk in the fridge and only 2 paper cups for coffee in the room. Only 2 sticks of creamer for coffee. If you run out you can probably call reception, however the number for reception is not mentioned anywhere as there is no information brochure anywhere in the room and the TV portal didn't help either. Coffee's $5 a cup if you purchase it from the lobby...
- Good bathroom, shower's great but toilet runs non-stop. Non-stop sound of water trickling can be annoying if you are trying to fall asleep and forgot to close the bathroom door.
- Fast free wifi internet, although doesn't always allow more than one device connected at the same time.
- Very comfortable bed if you are not sleeping on an extra bed (unless you like sleeping on concrete).
Breakfast
- Very good breakfast with ample choice, however also a little pricey. At $25 a head, it makes a breakfast for 3 a third of the wage of the poor guy digging holes in the construction site the hotel is on.
Swimming pool
- Fantastic swimming pool, which is the highlight of this hotel. However we had to wait until 10am for the pool to open as it was being cleaned.
Gym
- Excellent gym, great equipment, lots of machines
- Room service
Very low standards if you order western food, but you can get fruit and yoghurt at the snack bar in the lobby. The oriental mix grill was very nice, but nachos, burgers or steak sandwich were not very nice at all.
Hot food not available late at night, which we were a little surprised about when we checked in at midnight quite hungry.
Other annoyances
You need to deposit money with reception to be able to charge bills on your room, which is very strange. If you don't do that you need to pay as you go for everything in the hotel, which is very inconvenient if you don't want to be walking around with a stash of cash in your pockets all the time.
My son was excited to see that we could play scalectrix, which would have been quite a cool thing for a hotel to have if it had worked. We had to pay a deposit to use it, there was only one car, and in the end, no one in the hotel managed to make the scalectrix work.
Overall, would we be back? Probably not. I think we'll pay a bit more to get better standards overall. Hotels are about convenience, which Aloft lacks overall. Only rating average because of the swimming pool and the nice staff.