Hotel Concordia

Better than QUALITEL, but still basic.....

Earlier this year my man & I stayed in a hotel run by the same owners (Qualitel - you can find my review in this same page/section) and weren't really pleased with the facilities & service, so we decided that next time we'd try Hotel Concordia which seemed to be of a higher quality even though it was a 3-star like Qualitel (but had 2 diamonds which Qualitel didn't have). We had booked a nicer hotel but in the end we cancelled our stay there and found a couple of vacant rooms in Concordia, so we went there. But I have to say that it isn't really a lot better than Qualitel... even though I guess you can't really expect a lot for less than $45 USD per room per night (rate of Sept. 2009).....

The only pros I found here were: the rooms were fairly warm so we didn't need an extra blanket or felt cold at any time. Also, our bathroom didn't get flooded each time we took a shower like it did at Qualitel. The breakfast (included in the room rate) was also a fixed menu - anything additional needed to be paid for - but it was better than Qualitel's breakfast: we even got scrambled eggs on Sunday morning, which never happened at the other hotel. The juice and coffee were rather ugly but the fruit was pretty much OK. I guess that now that I have tried both hotels I don't think I'll stay in either of them again, and may consider staying elsewhere next time even if it isn't as close to downtown....

Unique Quality: The location is still excellent: the street where it is located is fairly quiet and you can easily walk to all the main spots in downtown. The facilities are nicely decorated and the furniture was newer than Qualitel's, even though the shower curtains (made of fabric…!!!) didn't look really hygienic. The rooms were a tiny bit more spacious, they had a telephone - which Qualitel's rooms didn't have - and also cable TV (but with a quite lousy signal). The bed was comfortable enough for us, even though my man's brother-in-law complained about his. However, the room we got was just above the front desk area (one of our windows faced a sort of inner patio) and it was awfully noisy. The hotel's employees would shout and slam doors even before dawn and wouldn't let us sleep peacefully. My relatives asked for extra pillows and they were told that hopefully there would be some in the warehouse because there were only 2 pillows allocated per room.......! The towels they gave us were ridiculously small and old, and they wouldn't give us extras either. The 2nd night my sister-in-law told us that she had found a cockroach in her room, and a while later we also found one in ours..... ugh!!!!

I also thought this was a good place to stay because it had a parking on site. Well, they do have one but it's VERY small and the entrance is very uncomfortable so our SUV could not go through the gate and we had to park the car on the street. The area is safe but we wanted to have a place to keep our car and it wasn't possible, and of course the man at the front desk wasn't happy when we asked him to please keep an eye on our car at night. Also, there were some prostitutes hanging out from the early morning on right next to the hotel, which honestly wasn't a pretty view, and they were friends with the spooky & nasty man who "watches over guests' cars" even if you don't want him to and then ask for $$$ from you (he "works" in this area, where both Qualitel and Concordia are located). Definitely not nice.