The Yak Hotel has very friendly and helpful staff. We were travelling on a tight buget and were extremely impressed with the quality and cleanliness of the room that we stayed in. It was the best value place I stayed in for my entire trip.
Looking out the window was a treat, our room was on the third floor looking out over the main street and spectacular mountain views.
I got a bed in a 6 bed dorm. I forget what I paid but it was cheap and clean. It was a bit busy for my liking but they do organize excursions from the hotel and it's a good place to meet up with people who might want to join with other travellers. They have a notice board you can check and internet access.
The Yak Hotel was the best hotel I stayed at in Lhasa. I would recommend this hotel over all other hotels I stayed at in Lhasa.
The staff is very helpful with trying to find the right bus to go where you want. Most of the staff speak fairly good english. In some cases they spoke beter english than they spoke chinese!
The rooms were very clean. The service was very good. The traditional Tibetan style room was great. The front desk staff speak english. I was able to leave bags in a safe room while I continued to travel around Tibet. The hotel also has internet access for a very small fee.
Because of events in Lhasa previous to our arrival (we were one of the first "groups" allowed in after the reopening in late June, 2008) there were many hotels closed down. The Yak Hotel, however, remained open. While I spent the first full day regretting having eaten something (and removing said something rather forcibly from my insides) the Yak Hotel was a quite comfortable place to stay.
There's a restaurant and bar within the hotel complex, where the food is decent, the yak butter tea salty and greasy, and the bar not stocked with much of anything.
You can buy oxygen and water nearby, as at the time of writing the hotel store wasn't open.
They have an internet center, though the printer sometimes doesn't work and not all of the computers work very well, and it isn't always open 24 hours a day like they say it is, notably when we were there (July 2008) it was open from 8:30 am to 6:00 pm (0830-1800). There is an internet cafe down the road (out the hotel to the left and across the street- go a few hundred meters and look right... kind of hard to find) if you need it and it's pretty cheap.
Wasn't our first selection in Lhasa but its where we ended up for 9 nights in this wonderful city. Rooms are clean, sense of being secure, enough hot water and reasonably priced. Well located in the older part of the city near the Barkhor square area.
