Backdated to 22/12/07 - New Holiday Inn, Melaka

The lovely brass tooling (1^st pic) adorns the wall of the front desk.

Holiday Inn, Melaka is a nice cozy 5-star hotel that recently opened its doors to guests in Oct 07. The surrounding is beautiful. Our room 1509 (RM300/day) offered us a beautiful view of Melaka Straits and Melaka Island with her lovely buildings on it. It has a safe, free broadband internet access and cable LCD TV.

However we found the housekeeping can be better. Our toilet mirror had dried water spots on it including a handprint that was not wiped off – the same goes for our room’s glass window. There is a gap on the top left of the shower mixer, which will grow algae if it is not patched up soon. Our room’s sofa chair still has some plastic wrappings stuck between the upholstery and armrest. One of the two mugs had some stains in it. There was also dust on the closet shelf.

On the second day, we found hair on the shower drain cover, after it was cleaned by housekeeping.

I tried to take picture of Malacca town’s development through the lift lobby’s windows, on the same floor, but decided against it because they were full of dried water spots.

We waited for a long time to get from the 15^th to the 2^nd floor; the lifts were very slow and hence jam-packed. While going down it stopped on many floors but no one could get in, which frustrated the hotel guests after having waited for so long – you see it on their faces.

But we did manage to get to the second floor restaurant where we had western breakfast (RM35). They had a very busy that morning. While one of my friends queue for a bowl of noodle soup, they ran out of bowls. She had salad and found some of the greens had turned brown. I also observed a chef feeling the freshly baked croissants with the back of his bare hand to see if they were cooled enough before he takes them, with his bare hands, again to place on the serving tray. We were surprised to find the food hygiene standard in Holiday Inn is the same as the hawker centers there. In Singapore, the cooks must wear gloves when they have to handle cooked food. Nevertheless the breakfast was enjoyable.

Prior to this, their reservation center’s operator said that our confirmed booking of the two rooms included breakfast – she was mistaken about that one. We were also told, by her, that if we were to book the rooms online we were entitled to free breakfast. (I wonder if she was right about that one since her first info was erroneous.) When we checked in, we asked the front desk if our bookings included breakfast? He told us that it did not. We were thankful we had asked earlier or we will be billed for it unknowingly.

Direction Signage – There could also be better road directions and signage to tell drivers where the hotel is. You need to slow down once you turn left into the slip road from the highway behind Mahkota Parade, just before the flyover, and then do an immediate 90-deg left turn into the road that lies between Makohta Hotel and Holiday Inn to get into the latter. Otherwise once you miss the second left turn, you will have doing a big round about route, on the said highway, to get into Holiday Inn again.

Another thing, the basement parking lots are not numbered. So if your friend were to drive your car, you will have to describe to him/her where it is parked.

Other then those things abovementioned, our stay at Holiday Inn Melaka was pleasant & comfortable.

We will be stopping by Melaka again on 27-28 January 08.

I wonder if we will stay in Holiday Inn, Malacca again.