http://www.trivago.com/dubai-549/hotel/hyatt-regency-dubai-8896 http://www.trivago.com/dubai-549/hotel/hyatt-regency-dubai-8896 http://ie2.trivago.com/images/layoutimages/logos/default.png http://www.trivago.com/dubai-549/hotel/hyatt-regency-dubai-8896/review-o544297 Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:12:00 +0200
I was there about 5 years ago and I went with several colleagues to meet a bunch of middle Eastern agents to whom we were launching a range of new products. We'd booked half a dozen rooms plus a ground floor meeting room, several lavish meals with the various agents and were there for 2 full days. The first annoyance was being told that we had to pay a full extra night's fees for an early check in. Since we arrived at 7.30am well after many people has already checked out, this seemed very mean. The check in itself took so long that I didn't get to my room until 7.50. With an overnight flight behind me I just wanted to sleep and have a shower before our meetings started at noon. No sooner did I get into bed than the most awful noise started. Builders were drilling in the rooms on the floor above me. It was absolutely impossible to sleep. My full night's fees had bought me just 10 minutes of peace before the builders started. I wasn't happy. This drilling, banging and hammering kept on all day. Even downstairs in our meeting room we could still hear the noise. No hotel should pretend to maintain 'business as usual' when it's so noisy that you can't think.

The meeting room was OK, well equipped but characteristically expensive. At one point we were waiting half an hour for some of visitors to arrive only to discover they were sitting in the lobby in the mistaken belief that the receptionist had let us know that they were waiting. For the rest of the day we were late with every following meeting.

We ate in several of the restaurants. I quite enjoyed the revolving restaurant where we had a buffet lunch each day although you do get a weird sense of very slow whiplash and vertigo. We also tried the Japanese restaurant which served excellent sushi. The cocktail bar had a Danish waiter who made the best margaritas I've had outside Mexico and that was probably my favourite part of the hotel since the windows looked out over the sea.

After going out for dinner at another hotel one evening we returned and my colleagues wanted to carry on drinking. I headed off to my room, anxious to get as many hours of drilling-free sleep as possible whilst 'the boys' headed off to the nightclub. Apparently the local ladies were very friendly and the next morning at breakfast my boss was laughing about how strange it was to spend an evening in a dodgy hotel surrounded by prostitutes. It wasn't quite so funny the next day when we checked out and he found an extra charge on his room bill for having a 'guest' in his room. When he asked for an explanation he was told that he'd been in the nightclub so they'd added this charge to cover the lady he'd taken to his room. It would have been embarrassing if it was true but was outrageous because it wasn't. He kicked up a fuss and made them take the charge off. We rang an Indian colleague who'd checked out early and sure enough, he'd been charged too but hadn't noticed. From the car going to the airport I called the other colleagues to warn them and sure enough they were charged too. My very-Christian Sri Lankan colleague was almost in tears at the insult of the hotel's attempt to accuse him of adultery and to charge him for it. My other colleague who was close to retirement age found it quite flattering that the hotel thought he was 'such a lad' but also insisted on the charge being removed. Of the six of us, I was the only one not charged in this way.

On the first evening in the hotel I argued with reception about the early check in charge, explaining that I'd been forced to pay for 10 minutes in my room before the drilling started. I had to speak to three or four staff before they grudgingly agreed not to charge me. On the basis of the noise, the clients left abandoned in the lobby, the prostitutes and pimping charges, I really can't recommend this hotel.
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