I’ve had to languish twice now in the Hotel Alma-Ata. Both for business and both disappointing. Post Russian in design, they've truly encapsulated the attitude as well. Most of the staff seemed disinterested to the point of arrogant with a grasp of only the faintest effort to understand or cater for the English language. The fountain out the front runs all night and with a late stop over seems like your sleeping next to Victoria falls. The bathrooms are archaic with it taking 11 to 19 minutes for the hot water to come through. (Yes I timed it.) Noise from the front street even early in the morning can be quite loud. All the walls are painted in what looks like the left over military pale green which gets depressing. The building seems to be in constant half hearted repair. The elevators stop with 1 to 3 inches either above or below the floor level causing god knows how many accidents and are the equivalent size of your standard fridge. The restaurant is bland and depressing although the meals are fine. The bed I’m sure was once a medieval torture device as were the chairs in the rooms. At the moment, contrary to what they advertise, there is no room service or restaurant bar on the third floor. On the plus side though, the view on the mountain side is spectacular and its centrally located.

The Hotel Alma-Ata is a typical Soviet-Style hotel. Somewhat grim, somewhat old, somewhat depressing.

If you go for the bargain-basement price, you will get a room with no AC, threadbare carpeting, a few pieces of toilet paper, and if you're lucky, hot water that day.

If you go for the "luxe" room at a higher price, it will be slightly bigger, slightly less threadbare, but will have an AC unit so you won't roast to death in the summertime.

Breakfast is included, a tasty buffet consisting of breads, salads, and hot breastfast and lunch items.

Great location: across from the Abai Opera house, 1/2 block from the "Gastronom Stolichniy" store that has a plethora of tasty items(including a bliny stand), and one block from Caffe Delia, with free wifi.

One of the cheaper places to stay in crazy expensive Almaty. And you get what you pay for.

This hotel is inexpensive for the following reasons: the room I was in was very small, dirty, generally uncomfortable and smelled. Bedside lamp was broken, no hotel directory (information) in English, ran water for 20 minutes to get warm water, mini-bar is the only amenity (i.e., no tissues, only 1 roll of toilet paper in the room, sit bath with inoperable shower hose). Internet access via dial-up only or Wi-Fi on a few floors with very weak signal. Wake up service was good and I was happy to receive the call to get out of there.

This was for the first time I was in Kazakhstan and our company booked a standard room at the Alma-ata hotel as it was very close to our office - both centrally located
I had lived 5 years in Russia some time ago , so I knew that for 200USD I couldnt expect the same what you get in Europe in terms of quality and service.
The hotel was okay. I didnt like the bathroom, which was a bit too old style and which had a little door into the ventilation system, through which you could hear EVERYTHING happening in the neighbouring bathroom. My colleague once even suprised me as he opened that door from his bathroom and we had a little chat face to face through it...
In general, the hotel is really ok, if you are used to the fSU hotel standards, but I want to mention 3 points.
1. a very nice view of the mountains..
2. the 70s style hotel restaurant. I almost died of laughter when I found out that instead of renovating a typical soviet style restaurant and buying new hifi set, the hotel promotes it as something 'cool' to be back in USSR. The food for breakfast is actually VERY good with loads of fresh veggies etc. but the overall soviet concept wasnt that pleasant.
3. when returning from a very late night meeting with my colleague, we noted a couple of prostitutes passing by the reception. As we spoke loudly in a foreign language, we were spotted as their potential customers and about 1h later when we were falling asleep after a busy day, we both received a phonecall: Do you want a lady?... This was truly annoying, considering we had to wake up in 3 hours...