Arriving in front of the hotel I was impressed by its huge entrance. Then again, the Russian seem to have a thing for big entrances. Unfortunately the service awaiting me behind those doors could not live up to the promise. It is not a bad hotel, the room was nice the bed is very comfortable, it is the service I have a problem with in Russia. Europe Hotel was no exception. It doesn't matter whether it was room service or the service at the restaurant. But overall I had a nice time and coming back to Irkutsk I'd probably stay at Europe Hotel again.

stayed there for two nights in July 2010. Had a double room which was very small but clean and comfortable with nice amenities and WiFi in the room. Breakfast was OK.
When we asked for two keys to our room (one for each of us) they weren't able to give us so we had to coordinate going in & out of the room with the one key we had. Also the hotel was covered in scaffolding when we were there and we couldn't open a window or draw the curtains for some light due to the workers.
Many of the staff didn't know english - luckily for me there were other guests there who knew both English & Russian. That said, they were very kind in arranging tea-pots with boiling water and a cup for me whenever I asked for them so that I could make myself tea to help fight the sore throat I had.
but all in all, it was a positive experience.

We were delighted when our taxi took us to this hotel. Tall, white pillars, and a tall, beautiful building with an impressive entrance.

The rooms were nice, and the beds comfortable. We enjoyed our stay here!

The location is a bit away from the centre, but a 15-20 minutes nice walk downtown was not any problem, we walked past many of the traditional wooden houses on the way, and passed the exciting market.

If I can complain about anything, it will be the service-mindedness of the employees at the hotel. It gave us some frustration, to say the least. We asked the ladies in the reception to help us make a phone call to our travel agent in Irkutsk. It was very clear to us that this call would be made when the ladies themselves felt like it (thus not anytime soon), and when they were finished talking and giggling to eachother about whatever they had been doing in the weekend. We almost missed our excursion.

The service was horrible in the restaurant, unfortunately. Perhaps we were unfortunate with our waitress, some of the others seemed nicer, but it is not nice to eat in an expensive restaurant when the waitress keeps sighing and rolling her eyes at us, and stands and stares, constantly. I would recommend people to eat out instead, but there are no restaurants in the immediate surroundings.

I would absolutely consider staying here again, but I would never eat at the restaurant, and would not expect any service from the reception.

I must mention, however, that there was an american lady at the hotel at the same time as us, with a broken leg. She got a lot of help, it seemed, some friendly staff members carried her to her place in the restaurant and were really attentive.

The hotel seemed very new, and perhaps the employees didn't have much experience in the service-business yet. I am sure this will improve.

Stayed here for 2 nights on a Cross country trip by plane. The hotel is only a couple of years old and rather nice looking. The first night we had a deluxe room at about 5000 Rubles pr night. The Room was new, although a little on the small side the bathroom was rather big. On our second night stay after coming back from Baikal (Listvyanka and hotel Mayak) we had a normal room for 3400 Rub per night and this was really small. The Girls at the front desk were nice and service oriented and our stay was OK. Needless to say there is not much to choose from in Irkutsk. Breakfast that was included in the rate was rather mediocre, and you had to wait for everything. It was more a problem with who did what, there was a lot of staff, but nobody new who was supposed to do what, and I got the impression that they thought that if they only put out 10 slices of bread at a time people would eat less. Grrrrrr
The hotel has wifi and you can buy cards at reception. Good connection speeds and the cards also work at the sister hotel Mayak in Listvyanka.

As fo location the hotel is located between the airport and the city and it’s a good 25 minutes to walk into the centre. Taxi to and from the airport is 200 Rub

PS; They only leave 1 roll of toilet paper in the room. I think its a russian thing because I experienced it at other hotels as well

There is not much to see in Irkutsk and the best Restaurant we found during our days there was Bier Haus on Karl Marx street. Nice service and good food and a large menu. Filet Mignon and Stroganoff are recommended.

To my surprise they don’t even have any nice beer tents in town.

We booked through www.baikalvisa.com I think they also own the hotels