On August 16, 2010, I arrived from Los Angeles at the Carlsbad Plaza Hotel in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic for 10 days medical treatment. I have made a booking directly with the hotel, on their Web-site. My package included half-board and medical procedures, which were the main purpose of my visit to this hotel.

Upon my arrival to the hotel, ater 22 hours flight from LA, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that my room is not ready and will not be ready until after 3:00 PM. It was especially strange, since hotel's car was meeting me at the airport and brought me to the hotel, as was agreed upon and scheduled with the hotel, at approximately 12:00 noon. Then, the people at the reception were trying to accommodate me at the room on the 4-th floor (which serves in reality as a first floor, facing internal yard), with my windows looking out onto the wall. There was no garden or balcony, which were confirmed by the hotel in my reservation. On top of it, the room was dirty, and outside yard was dirty and full of cigarette butts. I refused to stay in this room and was offered possibly the smallest room in the hotel, which was in reality the second, ancillary room of the Carlsbad suite. All other choices were either worse, or required substantial additional payment per night. So, I was forced (and got stuck) to stay in this claustrophobic room, which had so many problems, that it is almost impossible to enumerate them all. It had dirty, stained carpet, smell of tobacco; the bath tab was plugged and did not drain properly, Internet was not working (if it was working occasionally, the speed was below 200 kbps, which is hardly enough for sending E-mails), personnel was rude and inattentive, etc., etc. Also, to my biggest surprise the phone in my room was somehow switched to the suite next door, therefore for 4 days, either I was receiving phone calls at 3:00 AM, addressed to room 315, or someone else was answering my phone calls, addressed to my room 314, when my partners were desperately trying to reach me from Los Angeles. It was a nightmare!
All my complaints to the hotel personnel remained unanswered. They were either promising to fix these problems, or just plainly stating that they do not know what to do, because “their engineer is out of town”. It was bizarre...

Then, I made an attempt to launch a complaint with the General Manager of the hotel, but it did not change anything. When I finally was able to talk to the General Manager,
Mr. Jakov Frenkel, he was behaving in intimidating and insulting manner, was offering for me “to check out and move to the hotel across the street, if I do not like his hotel” and finally stated that “this hotel is 5 stars hotel and maybe you should go to Grand Hotel Pupp, which is cheaper”. It was just unbelievable! In addition, Mr. Frenkel, who looked like "Russian mafia guy", was talking to me in bulling, insulting and condescending manner, which I find extremely inappropriate and unacceptable. It looks to me (and I was told, that this hotel is indeed owned by some “Russian mafia” types), that the owner (s) of the hotel encourage hotel management to cater to the clientele from the Russian province, since “they do not know much about the service and do not count the money”). I was told about it by several staff members of the hotel. Nice, convenient policy, isn’t it?

So, this complaint to the Manager was apparently worthless, and I got stuck in this dump for 7 more days (due to the pre-paid medical treatments). It took me one phone call to the IT provider in Prague, which corrected my Internet speed and increased it to 1.2 Mbps without any problems (as per General Manager, it was impossible to do); I personally supervised and directed some maintenance man to switch the phones, etc. Nevertheless, the service and "ambiance" of the hotel did not change or improved. The entire hotel was catering to the Russian clientele only, speaking only in Russian and behaving like Russians were behaving in late seventies in the former Soviet Union. It was awful and humiliating experience to deal with these people, to see, how hotel personnel is serving the tables, what kind of food they are serving (it was absolutely uneatable – for example, one of the dishes was “fish-risotto”, which included fish bones, as well); to see absolutely empty restaurants or dirty spa (where they were serving tea without a sugar, asking to "sign to the room" for a spoon of honey). It was absolutely insane... and sad to see this falling apart hotel, with faceless, untrained personnel, empty restaurants and wondering Russian clients, who were semi-drunk all the time and behaved in unacceptable, uncivilized manner. It was like "deja-vu" for me, who emigrated from Russia 32 years ago... DO NOT GO THERE! IT IS A DUMP!!!