We liked this hotel. They did everything possible to make us comfortable and even asked us if we needed anything else.
The hotel was clean. The included buffet breakfast was good and it was located on the top floor of the hotel so it came with a view of the city.
The central location made it easy to walk around and enjoy some of the sites.
The 'tourist' hotels were more expensive and not as centrally located. The Taj Mahal Continental is not fancy in comparison to the five star hotels, but, for us was a real local treasure.

This hotel advertises it self as being a 5 star and luxury charging 5 star rates. In reality this is no better that a 3 star hotel anywhere in the world, including India.
The hotel is decrepit and too expensive for what it has to offer. A rip off! I wouldn´t advise any one to stay here.
Every city has bad hotels, what irritates me is that they are allowed to promote themsleves as 5 star and thus charging princes accordingly to this.
I paid 270 reais for a standard room, the internet did not work, the swimming pool was empty. When I called to book and asked specifically for these items, the receptionist told me they were available...Don't stay at this hotel.

After three days on a boat, we arrived at the hotel to find out that they didn't have our reservation (which we had booked some 5 days earlier). The staff were incredibly rude and unhelpful - in fact, they simply refused to believe we had a booking at the hotel, despite us showing them our online reservation confirmation. Then when we asked if they had rooms available, they tried to charge us the much, much, much higher 'walk-in' rate for rooms.

When we asked to speak to the manager, they told us he was not on the premises. When we asked for them to call Expedia to confirm our booking, they refused. Even when we pointed out that they advertise their hotel and receive bookings through Expedia, they still refused to take any responsibility for the situation (saying it was our travel agency and we should contact them - despite us not having a phone).

In the end, we had to email Expedia and have them resend the confirmation - this took two hours during which time we had to wait in the lobby. After three days on a boat, we were livid at how rude they were to us.

As we found out, the problem was that the room had not been charged yet (only booked) in their system. The staff were much nicer when the confirmation came through, however, when we paid, they applied an astronomical exchange rate which grossly inflated the price... But by this time it was too late at night for us to find another hotel so we just had to pay it.

Having had similar problems with hotels in Brazil in the past, we were horrified at the poor level of service. The staff at Taj Mahal were so rude, it was obvious that they were just hoping we would go away and they wouldn't have to deal with it. Other hotels, have in the past checked whether any rooms are available, taken a pre-authorisation of my credit card, and taken us straight to the rooms. (Then sorted out the booking later).

As for the actual hotel, it was probably quite nice 30 odd years ago, but has not been updated or improved since. For Manaus, it is by no means the worst hotel going around (though certainly, it is the most overpriced).

Unfortunately I booked this hotel and only then read the reviews on TA... So I had to swallow the pill and bopy was it bitter... This hotel is a total rip-off where owners have not invested one centavo in 20 years on the property. Just one example that seemed to represent our experience there: as we had the air con on during the night and of course it malfunctioned like all appliances in the hotel, it created a flood and a huge puddle in our room on the manky ugly carpet, beside the beaten bed, next to the horrible lights.