My colleague and I were quite excited to be staying at this hotel and were looking forward to arriving there after a long day on the road but were thoroughly disappointed with almost everything about the place.
The entrance to the hotel is at the side of a huge open and busy car park and there were no bell staff to help with luggage. The receptionist was miserable and rude but the lobby seemed grand enough so we reserved judgement until we saw our rooms. The first thing I noticed were the stains all over the carpet and the cheap 70s furnishings. The furniture was chipped, worn and dirty...I had to scrape random items of food off the chair before I could sit down. On top of this the bed was extremely uncomfortable - felt like a camp bed - and the room was hot, and noisy all night, plus the floodlighting from the car park managed to get into my room no matter what I did with my curtains.
The piece de resistance was that, having spent a mostly sleepless night, the alarm i had set on the TV woke me one hour earlier than I had set it to because the hotel staff hadn't changed the clocks on the TV when they went forwards (the same happened to my equally furious colleague).
The only redeeming feature was breakfast in the hotel restaurant in the morning although the power went out for about 20 minutes so we had no lights.
Avoid, avoid, avoid!
- Excelsior Grand Catania
- Hotel Excelsior Grand
