Embrace

GENERAL:|By no stretch of the imagination can this building and its collection of rooms be called a hotel, which the proprietors do repeatedly in emails and on booking.com. The intention seems to be to mislead guests into thinking they are coming to a hotel, whereas actually the whole setup is geared to keep anything which might cause disturbance to the proprietors' otherwise peaceful lives to an absolute minimum. For instance there is no hotel reception, no breakfast, no possibility to pay onsite by card or cash, they won't answer phone calls, etc.||On their website embrace.ee (i.e. before you book) they state: "If you need anything in the late-hours, when the receptionist is not there any more, please call and we will assist you." However we never saw a "receptionist" there at any time, and once we had booked they sent us an email stating "Check your mailbox because this is the only communication form in our hotel, no phone calls answered". Moreover even an email enquiry from us about breakfast arrangements was simply ignored.||And another standard email told us peremptorily: "Pay attention! If you want us to do the online check-in for you, a fee of 5 € will be added to the bill." Of course at a hotel the check-in would be performed - at no extra cost - by the guests simply arriving and checking in at the reception, but since there is no one at the (non-existent) reception they expect you to access their website again before you arrive. And what they call "check-in" is just a euphemism for authorising a payment to them via the internet (something which not everybody can do when not at home, and this is also not made clear beforehand).||ROOM:|The room we stayed in ("Marinace", claimed to be a "superior double room with sofa") was not in any respect superior. It had no wardrobe, just a few drawers, a ludicrously small bathroom/WC with a minute washbasin and an unpleasant musty smell. There was no socket in the bathroom for an electric toothbrush, razor, etc. nor any convenient sockets in the room for these or mobile phones (all sockets were almost at floor level). We turned up the heating in the room to level 5 (the maximum), but it remained cold, presumably they had turned off the central heating to save money, in spite of near-zero outside temperatures overnight. The bed was comfortable and the room clean, but that of course doesn't make it superior.||BREAKFAST:|The proprietors state on Tripadvisor "Free breakfast" and a photograph supplied by "Management" shows a room on the premises and states "Breakfasts are served here". On booking.com they state "Exceptional breakfast 12 €". However there was absolutely no provision for breakfast there. In a standard email after booking they stated that for breakfast we should go to a completely different place, a cafe called "Alice Backyard", which is 400 meters away. We went there as instructed but the owners informed us that they were closed until summer, and were amazed that Embrace was claiming otherwise. Had they been open, breakfast would have cost us 36 € (18 € p.p.). The owners informed us that there was no other place in the vicinity serving breakfast, so the whole thing was a complete waste of time and of course we had no breakfast that morning.||COMMUNICATION:|Once you have made the online payment (in their terminology: "checked-in") they promise to send you a code which will open the door of the room on arrival. We paid early and waited in vain for the code to be sent and questioned this per email. A person calling herself "Inga" (no surname - she could in fact have claimed her name was King Kong for all we knew or ever saw of her) replied by email signed "See you soon, Inga", though of course - as we later realised - she didn't have the slightest intention of seeing us, neither in this life nor the next. She said we would receive the code by SMS text message on the day of arrival, but still none came and we were therefore seriously worried at 15:30 on our day of arrival, that access to the room at 16:00 (the standard arrival time) would fail. We wanted to send an email to say that we had not yet received the SMS and discovered by accident that they had stupidly not sent us the code by SMS, as announced, but by email.||OMINOUS DEVICES:|In our bedroom there was a device (see photo), which we didn't notice at first, which tracked us and had a small light which flashed red when we moved about the room. There didn't seem to be a camera attached, but who knows. Then we noticed that there was an apparently active camera with its light on (see photo) in the so-called breakfast room. However there was no information to guests that they were being tracked/photographed/filmed. But with or without such a warning: photographing guests is an absolute no go.||CONCLUSION:|Our impression is that the proprietors deliberately supply their guests with a mixture of misleading, confusing, contradictory and quite simply untruthful information, and that their only concern is not their guests' well-being and comfort, but their guests' money. We would not recommend this "hotel".

Overall the guesthouse was a positive experience. The room we had (Marquina) was light and breezy and overall clean. The accommodation sits in a pretty and quiet residential area and is an easy 7 minute walk to the beach and indoor waterpark but a 20 minute walk to the centre of Pärnu. This can be quite inconvenient when wanting to head out for dinner or go where the "action" is. There are however plenty of electric scooters around town and in the suburbs and if you have internet access on your phone to pay this would be an easy and convenient way to get around.||We booked on booking.com which states that the property features a minbar which we always use to store food/drinks but found on arrival the room itself does not have a fridge but the communal dining room (which is nice and cosy) does have a large, very clean glass door fridge with a storage tray for each room (a little like a hostel but no issue and happy to use this). ||There is also complimentary drinking water which was great and comes out as natural or mineral. There is also a coffee machine which charges 1 Euro for coffee, boiling water from the machine is free as well as tea and sugar. ||Depending on guests, the accomodation is quiet most of the time but we had a group stay on the floor above for one night and heard stomping until 1am. This is of course not the fault of the guesthouse. ||There is no key access so you will get a code and use this for the duration. The keypad is quite loud so when used for neighbouring rooms it does sound like someone is trying to enter your room which we found quite funny once we realised this was not the case and was no problem. ||A couple of constructive points are the that the bathroom is the smallest I have ever seen. It was clean but so tiny that sink is only big enough to wash your hands and there is an obstruction at every angle of the tiny space, be it a wall, shelf, towel, sink. The fold out bed for our son was in poor condition, not very clean, hard and broken at the tail end so hanging down. Lucky he is only little so this didn't bother him too much but if it was a taller person it would not make for a comfortable sleep. ||The couple of staff members that came in and out of the property were helpful and friendly to questions and requests.

Room and bed was comfortable. Nice bathroom and added bonus if massage shower though I didn't have time to test it out. Breakfast was a small buffet but good, fresh quality ingredients. We liked the noise isolation between doors of lobby and guest rooms so much we did not hear what was happening in the dining room.

Nice clean apartments. Good quiet location. Private parking. Close to beach. Everything was fine except hollow and squeaky bed.

Stayed Sunday night in a small but very clean double room. Courtyard is tidy with limited parking. Enjoyed a picnic dinner (thanks to the nearby RImi market) at the single outdoor table. Modest but adequate breakfast. Reservations were made online but required an international bank wire to hold the room.

We had lovely stay at this comfy guesthouse. Staff was truly helpful andd made us feel like home. We got extra help with making our son evening food etc. Breakfest is really good! ||Parking was plenty and easy.||||If something, bathroom was really small. At the same time this guesthouse was at the quiet part of town, it was maybe bit off if you want only walk around... It is easy walk to the beach, but most restaurants etc are bit longer walk away. Not problem if you don´t mind it, we aren´t too keen of walkers and we managed it, so it´s just something you may wanna think. ||||All and all, hosts were nice and helpfull, bed was good, breakfest really good. This will keep as an option for our next stay also.

This is very nice bed & breakfast guesthouse and we have beeb here also last summer. Rooms are light and airy, beds nice to sleep. But at breakfast there was lack of some, usually all warm dishes although there was still one and half hours left to go breakfast.||Near both town and city.

We stayed one night on our way from Tallinn to Riga. The place was wonderful and its location close to everything. I thank all the staff there for their kind treatment especially the owner or the manger of the place for their warm welcome and to upgrade our room, She help us and answer all the questions, Thank you very much