The George Hotel Kiribati

The hotel is located in Betio, an hour from the airport but the hotel arranged transport for me. Betio is the perfect location in Tarawa. Multiple restaurants and attractions (WW2 sites) are on Betio. The restaurant served breakfast in its open air restaurant. A/C was great in the room and I did not have an issue with mosquitoes or other insects. Although the WiFi was available—the signal strength was weak from my room and it was accessed urging tokens which seems to have a lot a low threshold for data and I kept having to renew tokens frequently. No pool. Parking out front —I rented one of their cars for $90 AUD a day. Airport shuttle was $30 AUD and took an hour. Solid hotel and great location.

Wow……where do I start? This is definitely one of the worst hotels I’ve ever stayed in. Let’s start with the bathroom – disgusting, smelly drains, falling off toilet seat, rusty, mouldy, dirty walls, poorly appointed bathroom. No mirror, the soap dispensers are far away from the actual shower so difficult to use. There is a water heater attached to the shower, water is tepid. Just not a room you really want to go into. The bedroom air-conditioning has no remote control functionality. It worked well but to turn it off I had to climb up onto the bed and switch it off at the wall. The mattress was completely had it and rolled into the middle, there was no rubbish bin or lamp, the curtains don’t keep the light out. There is zero soundproofing and given that the hotel is right next to a nightclub that was playing loud music until 1:30 am the first night I was there, plus the neighbouring guests came home at 2:30 am and proceeded to make a lot of noise for the next hour or so, this is a real problem. The restaurant and lounge area look okay – kind of Bali-esque decor. Food is not nice. accessing The Wi-Fi service is probably the most tedious process I’ve ever encountered – you have to buy a four hour coupon at the bar. The waitress takes about 15 minutes to set it up which involves adding a coupon from a list that they have which seems to run out very frequently and then no Wi-Fi Cost is two dollars. Once up and running it worked fine but you have to keep going back and going through the same tedious process. Service – non existent. Checkout took about 20 minutes to prepare a bill for $48 for food items – no exaggeration. English skills are very poor and there is obviously no training provided for staff. Airport shuttle – pick up was efficient. Departure was not. Despite several reminders, the shuttle wasn’t ready at the agreed time. 15 minutes later one of the hotel staff drove me towards the airport to then connect with the shuttle bus which then took me the rest of the way. Who needs this? All in all it was a really unpleasant experience – I would give it zero stars if I could. There is a huge shortage of accommodation in Tarawa and it’s clear to see why this hotel often has rooms available. I must think the stuff though for letting me have a very late check out at cost - that was appreciated.