Yak Hotel

How are stars awarded

This is a supposedly 3 star hotel but why remains a mystery. We stayed there for 2 days on our arrival in Lhasa and 2 days before we left. On arrival we requested a non smoking room and were allocated a room on the 4th floor which we were assured was non smoking. When we got to the room it smelt very bad of smoke and something we could not quite work out. We asked to be moved but we were told that there was no other room available. The carpet was filthy, there were long black hairs all over the bathroom and the room stank. It was clearly a smoking room but the way the hotel dealt with this was to remove the ashtray, light some incense and open the window. The window opened onto a brick wall about half a meter away. On the second night it rained quite heavilly and we discovered the source of the stink. There was water dripping into the wardrobe which was slowly rotting away. The television did not work and when we asked if there was an english channel we were told no.

We told the agency who had organised our trip to change our hotel or make sure we had a better room for our second stay. This time we were given a room on the third floor, the carpet was filthy although the bathroom was slightly cleaner than the first room. The room had a double and a single bed and so much furniture that we could of been staying in a furniture warehouse. there was nowhere to put our cases and very little possibilty of moving around the room. This room did not stink and also somehow had an English TV channel. Second room a huge improvement on first but still way off the 3 star mark.

Unique Quality: good location near main shopping streets.