Garden Palace Hotel Surabaya

Average Hotel. Nothing To Shout About!!

Book into Club Excellence Room for 3 nights. Suppose to be a better & bigger size room with some kind of theme room based on their hotel website. Unfortunately when you enquired to choose the theme that you preferred, it is non existence. Every room is the same. Even the so call free transfer to airport is non existence. The information provided in their website and brochures are out dated.

This Garden Palace Hotel (4*) and Garden Hotel (3*) is situated just back to back connecting to each other through a walkway. From my observation, Garden Hotel is really in bad shape and need refurbishment urgently. The size of Club Excellence room is spacious. Bathroom is OK. However the air-conditioned is a big problem. It just cannot get cold even if you switch it to the lowest temperature. I guessed the temperature to be somewhere around 25C so it is kind of stuffy and uncomfortable. I changed the room on the 2nd night and it just fare slightly better than the first room. Should be the same with the rest of the rooms as it is a centralised air-con.

Breakfast provided is pretty good. Everyday they will change the menu. There is a section for chinese, indonesian and western food. Usually they will put a plate of sushi & wasabi also but don't expect much. You can also order fried egg, scrambled egg and so on.
There is a reflexology shop at the ground floor (walkway between the Garden Palace Hotel and Garden Hotel) offering 50K rupiah for an hour. Very good value for money and refreshing after so much walk. There is also traditional massage at the Clark Hatch fitness centre but prices slightly more expensive.

The hotel location is not that bad. Around 2km walk to the biggest Tunjungan shopping complex. Coming out from the Garden Hotel turn left. You will find another smaller Surabaya shopping complex just within 300m walking distance. You find plenty of restaurants, food court and fast food. Futher down the road (500m from the hotel), there is a Submarine Museum.

To travel in within Surabaya city, use only Blue Bird taxi. They are more regulated and used meter even you don't remind them. Very reliable taxi company. I actually called one for transfer to the airport. The taxi driver actually came to wait for me at the lobby at least an hour earlier. Using meter, the fare is just around 80K rupiah