Nobilis Hotel

“Old-style experience”

I'd wanted to visit Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg for years; the epicentre of east European Jewish experience. This hotel was lovely and aroused in me all my memories of the kind of stylish opulence that could be found in such parts of the former Soviet Union. Breakfasts were interesting and sufficient; excell… more

I'd wanted to visit Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg for years; the epicentre of east European Jewish experience. This hotel was lovely and aroused in me all my memories of the kind of stylish opulence that could be found in such parts of the former Soviet Union. Breakfasts were interesting and sufficient; excellent beds and rooms; friendly helpful staff; all of which contradicts my memories of the former Soviet Union! Taxis are a nightmare of cheats in Lviv, and the train station is ghastly, and the city is overrun with tourists. But stay in this hotel and escape the mayhem.

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“A 5 star luxury hotel with a bizarre approach to its customers”

Let me start with the first bit of strangeness. In many years of hotel stays we have never been where the temperature could not be controlled from the in-room thermostat. Our room had one but it didn't work. We were told that the temperature had to be set by the reception desk, which put us in the … more

Let me start with the first bit of strangeness. In many years of hotel stays we have never been where the temperature could not be controlled from the in-room thermostat. Our room had one but it didn't work. We were told that the temperature had to be set by the reception desk, which put us in the uncomfortable position of having to call down each time we wanted a change and even then nothing much happened. On our 1st night we asked to have the AC turned down. Nothing was done. Then we found that the desk in our room was about 20% higher than normal which made it hard to sit down at our computer. There was no stationery or writing pad in the room and only one of the several English and French TV channels worked. The elegantly appointed breakfast room was incongruously compromised by very loud night club style rap music. We asked that it be turned down. It was for a few minutes and then came back up again. A complaint to the manager on our second morning resulted in a written email apology and a bottle of local sparkling wine. A nice gesture but the next two mornings the music was as loud and disturbing as ever. But despite these things I would not have bothered to write a review if our check-out hadn’t been a perfect example of bizarre rules. We had gone to the trouble of changing money so we could pay our bill in cash. Our bill total was indicated in the local currency and so we handed over 95% of it in cash and asked that the small remainder be put on a credit card – a simple and common transaction. After the money was counted we were told we could pay only 3/4ths of the bill in cash and the rest would have to be on our credit card. This would have left us with quite a bit of local currency to take out of the country, where we’d have difficulty exchanging it. We repeatedly asked to speak to a manager since none of this made any sense. But the personnel at the desk refused to call the manager saying he or she would tell us the same thing; that this is their “system.” Finally one of the desk people called a manager and after a short conversation told us that they would make an exception and accept all the local currency we had given them. The Nobilis Hotel has some work to do if they want to reach international hotel standards.

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