78 Reviews
Anwar Al Madinah Movenpick Hotel
Medina|2.98km from Masjid Al Qiblatayn
Firstly I would like to make very clear that there are two Movenpick hotels in Madinah which some reviewers seem to be mixing up! This one is part of the Accor group and the Movenpick Madina that we stayed in. It is BEHIND the Pullman Zamzam Madinah, which faces one side of the Masjid al Nabawi haram. So it is a couple of roads walk away from the haram on the opposite side to the female entrances to the haram. This is nowhere near five star standard. Due to the poor condition of the bathrooms and room decor I would say three is being generous. Despite its attractive entrance and reception this is a rundown hotel in need of refurbishment, in particular the disgusting bathrooms. The bath, sinks and tiles were old, stained and mouldy. This was made worse by the fact that the housekeeping was very poor. The rooms weren’t cleaned and towels not changed unless we requested this. The actual rooms were ok despite the tired looking furnishings and lack of cleaning. The receptionist who checked us in apologised for not giving us adjacent rooms, but we discovered we did have adjacent rooms, and both were triple rooms. The rooms were quite spacious with comfortable generous sized beds but the TVs had very poor reception and the wifi was appalling, regularly dropping out. The fridges in the rooms were tiny and barely cold. In fact they and the lights turned off whenever we took the key cards out! Because of the hotel location the view out of the window was depressing, a view of the main road. A nice touch though was that as well as a Quran there was a nice prayer mat in each room. On our first morning we went down to breakfast to discover that the female staff had already let some guests have breakfast for our rooms. The head of staff quickly resolved this apologising profusely. In fact apart from this confusion on the first day we found the restaurant staff to be very nice people. They always had a smile for us and the waiters always ready to assist. We were very very disappointed with the very limited cooked breakfast items - there was barely any variety and apart from on one day only vegetarian options. The pancakes were disgusting and tasted like long life ones from packets rather than freshly made. Very very disappointing. But the worst was that there was no fresh coffee!! Only sachets of instant coffee. How is this possible in a so called five star restaurant? There was a big unhealthy selection of pastries though. And the strawberry juice when available was nice. We tried to order room service in the evening on one occasion- the staff member (chef?) who answered the call was rude and told us some of the items were either unavailable or incorrectly described on the menu! On the whole staying at this hotel was a major inconvenience due to its location and at best it is a three star hotel. I would not stay here again.
Excellent
78 Reviews