The Sparks Hotel in Jakarta is a funky designer Hotel in a racy part of Central Jakarta. Sparks Hotel young staff certainly go out of their way to make you feel welcome. Travelers with kids should definitely give the Sparks Hotel a miss. The Sparks Hotel is in the colourful Mangga Besar District with its girlie spas, discos and late night eateries.

The rooms are stylish with strong colours and comfortable beds. There is cable television and the rooms have all the modcons including coffee and tea making facilities. Bathrooms ala Philip Starck is standard. We were not enthusiastic about the bare concrete floors though.

The breakfast is the best I have seen in a hotel in this class.

The pool is a stylish glass cube and the breakfast was varied and well presented. The lobby is sparse but was in keeping with the style of the rest of Sparks. There is Wifi in the lobby but we were surprised that it was not free.

The bar downstairs is as raunchy as you would get anywhere in Jakarta. BTW, in addition to the usual nuts and crackers you find in hotel rooms mini bar, the Sparks offers a range of colored prophylactics and lube.

Been told that this hotel is brand new in town. Stayed 2 days.
Room- ok, clean.
Breakfast- yummy.
Service- staff not so friendly and not helpful. there are misscommunication when we want to check-in. (must make a confirmation call if u make reservation via web)
Location- boring. shops close early.

I work from my laptop, if you don't need internet at your hotel then skip this review.

I had stayed at Hotel Sparks previously several times over the last 6 years, and always had a good experience. This time around the place is really showing it's age. When it was first built it looked like a fantastic trendy hotel rising out of the Lokasari area. This time it just looked a bit run down and cheap.

As other reviewers surely mention; watch out for the noise, you will be thumping all night long with their disco (which is invariably almost empty) while I was there, and at $8 a beer - good luck to them.

My issue was the internet, you could get an okay signal (not good enough for VOIP) during the daytime - well specifically from around 5am - 6pm, but after 6pm it froze up consistently to the point that even trying to load a website (google, wikipedia, trip advisor) times out. Occasionally if I stood in the hall, right beneath the wifi router I could load an email from outlook (as long as there were no attachments).

I complained to management and they sent their internet boy off to restart the router a few times and it was just the same for the entire week I was there.

Only thing I can imagine is that all the guests were busy downloading movies and such at night and choked the bandwidth, but it REALLY sucked to have no internet from 6pm onwards. Also it was frustrating not to understand why for the first few days - management should just frankly tell you the situation and let you find new accommodations.

Their 'business center' is just a room on the first floor - with 3 computers - same connection. It's on the same floor as the disco - so it's LOUD... hardly business oriented.

As for the rest of the hotel;
- Below average western room service menu, nothing much I liked, I just fasted for a few days and lost some weight
- Good location and taxis always out front
- A nice faded star kind of place, however their prices are a bit high for what you get.

At 12.30am the thumping music from two disco/karaoke bars was keeping me awake (even though I was on the 6th floor!). I went to reception to complain, and the poor night manager, a nice man, but obviously unable to do anything, showed me the disco downstairs, where I asked the boss 'is this a hotel or a disco?' and the very sleazy upstairs girlie bar, where I did the same with the rather frightening looking boss up there. Neither boss was the slightest bit concerned that a businessman couldn't sleep. Loud music and sleaze. Clearly, this hotel is not where you go for a comfortable rest during a business trip to Jakarta.