Before the trip I read some horrible customer reports. They are all outdated. The hotel has been renovated. It is clean, pleasant, breakfast is good. No air condition though, and if you keep the widow open, it gets noisy.

Had to stay here for 2 nights , well 1 night and about 10 hours , courtesy of maybejet , sorry easyjet. Hotel looked fine from the outside and reception and lobby were fine. The twin room we were allocated smelt of smoke , not helped by the Bulgarian smoking in the corridor outside our door in the morning , the bathroom could have done with a gallon of bleach splashed around it. Generally the room was grubby. We slept in our clothes under the duvet , which was a blanket folded in half and loosely stitched into a sheet. Breakfast was unidentifiable , coffee from the machine was the highlight.
Thankfully the shopping mall across the road passed the afternoon.
If you dont have to, dont stay here.

After reading the reviews here I wasn't expecting much and was actually pleasantly surprised. The Hemus is nothing to get excited about but is as reasonably priced as you can expect in Sofia, and we had a decent night. Our twin room was pretty small and the bathroom was dinky; there was a smell of smoke but it wasn't appalling. Everything worked, the room was clean and well furnished, the bed was comfortable, the minibar was reasonable, the breakfast was good. No complaints at all - admittedly we only stayed a night, in transit.

It's on a busy street so you do get traffic noise (not bad with the window shut) and interestingly there seemed to be territorial dog skirmishes ("I didn't even know Skirmia was in the war") going on 18 floors below us - but they shut up before midnight.

There's a Japanese restaurant on the top floor and a casino, neither of which did we sample.

We stayed there for two nights. On arrival at 22.30 everything seemed to be shut - no bar or food faciltiies. The room was stuffy and small, and the bathroom more like a broom cupboard.

Breakfast was dismal.

On the second night (we had unfortunately paid in advance) the noise was overwhelming - barking dogs, the screech of traffic at the nearby crossroads.

Recommendation - avoid.