Hotel Voronezh

“Average brief stay”

We spent the night here on business. The staff was super helpful and nice. The room were layed out in a very weird way. The KEY to the success of your shower, is you have to let it run for 15 minutes to get the hot water going. I didn't know that and took a freezing shower because of it. The bed … more

We spent the night here on business. The staff was super helpful and nice. The room were layed out in a very weird way. The KEY to the success of your shower, is you have to let it run for 15 minutes to get the hot water going. I didn't know that and took a freezing shower because of it. The bed is not the most comfortable, but you get a huge HUGE room, living room and a bedroom. It's fine to sleep. Just remember the shower tip!

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“Made me laugh so hard I had a belly ache for three days”

I've not laughed so much in weeks. I opened the door to my room and was pleasantly surprised to have a small lobby all to myself - with toilet. Well this is nice, I thought, and opened the door to my room. I did a quick double take and ran to my colleague, a few rooms down the corridor, to tell her… more

I've not laughed so much in weeks. I opened the door to my room and was pleasantly surprised to have a small lobby all to myself - with toilet. Well this is nice, I thought, and opened the door to my room. I did a quick double take and ran to my colleague, a few rooms down the corridor, to tell her to come look. They must have given me Brezhnev's old office, was my first thought. It turned out I had been given a suite, not a room, and the suite's 'living room' was a good twenty meters long. Unfortunately there was not much in it: a desk and large (very comfortable) leather sofa at one end, and the TV and (empty) minibar at the other. The distance between the sofa and TV made it hard to watch anything but this didn't bother me since there were only Russian language channels, which I can't understand, and I was there to work, not to watch TV. There was also only one electricity socket, for the TV and minibar to share. Since the minibar was empty and I wasn't going to watch TV, this also didn't bother me. I started the long and arduous journey across my ballroom and ten minutes later arrived in my bedroom. This had the phone in it (I had been looking for one on the desk in my ballroom), which meant I was the proud owner of two phones: there was also one in the loo. But not on my desk. Nevermind. The bathroom took me a while to figure out. It had one of those 360 degrees shower cubicles which spray water from all directions. These directions include straight out at you when you're stood at the opening. The water was cold and took a little while to warm up, which meant I had a daily struggle to turn on the shower without getting cold water sprayed at me (somewhat in the style of old Lauren and Hardy movies - poor Ollie). It was also not fixed to the floor and one day I nearly fell over with cubicle and all while trying to get out. The hotel was ludicrously inefficient in other ways. The reception desk had no idea who was in which rooms (we were in a group and they hadn't kept track), the hotel bar closed at 5pm, and there wasn't so much as a bag of peanuts in the minibar (that mainstay of the frequent travelers' diet). But I had fun. I had a good jog in my ballroom every morning, played tennis there with some friends and tried to get them to install a glittery disco ball so we could have a Saturday Night Fever style party (the Russian staff didn't the joke). And they cooked us lovely lunches every day. I mean it. Breakfast wasn't so great but they made up for that at lunch. So stay here, for a laugh. The place has clearly been designed by people with more money than sense, and they've invested in what I like to think of is gangnam oligarch-style nouveau-riche glitz. Chelski bling. Abramovich's favourite hangout. Just don't take it seriously as a hotel.

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