E453UOwilliamp
Google
I stayed in Gems Hotel for one week in June 2025 as a non-Arabic speaking visitor to Lebanon. The room was nice. It was large and kept clean. There were two televisions. I never watch television and didn’t even need one, certainly not two. I would have rather had a refrigerator. But on the whole, the room was nice. The front desk staff were also courteous. That’s sadly where the good things end.||The hotel is located directly across the street from multiple bars. These have frequent talking and heavy loud music long into the night. I was on the third floor facing them, and the noise was such that I found it almost impossible to sleep between 12 and 3 in the morning. Obviously, this is not the fault of the hotel staff, but it still had a major detrimental impact on my stay. This by itself would be sufficient reason for me to advise people not to stay at this hotel. But there is more.||Breaskfast was supposed to be served between 7 and 11. I came down once at about 7:03 and the lights were dark and nothing was out. It didn’t start to be served until after 7:20. If the hotel is going to advertise that breakfast starts at 7, it should be ready by 7. The quality of the food was disappointing. There was a lot of bread and carbohydrate-rich food but not much else. I saw no vegetables and very little fruit. All of the bananas were severely bruised.||The room key was needed for the elevator and to enter the room. On multiple occasions throughout my stay, it stopped working for no apparent reason. I would take it to the front desk for it to be fixed. On one occasion, the people there did something with it, and it worked on the elevator, but then didn’t work for my room. Maintenance staff left a bottle of water in my room for the first few days, but then didn’t leave one there after. I don’t know why. Both times, I went down to the desk to request a bottle, and it was delivered.||The hotel has a service in which it will call a taxi for anyone on the spot. I took advantage of this twice. Both times, the results were poor. The first time, I explained to the worker at the front desk, who spoke fluent English, very clearly where I wanted to go. However, he did not relay it properly to the taxi driver, who took me to a completely different spot from where I had intended. The second time, I needed a taxi for 4 in the morning to go to the airport for my departure. Because of the time, I decided to inform the hotel staff in advance to ensure that someone would be there. I told two different employees when I wanted the ride. I went to sleep by around 7 P.M. the night before to try to get a good night of sleep ahead of my flight. However, I was awoken by a phone call sometime after 9 asking me whether I wanted the taxi for 4 A.M. that morning or the morning after. This makes no sense because, not only had I already twice said when I wanted the taxi, but checkout was that morning, so I couldn’t have requested a taxi for the morning after that. I was never able to fall back to sleep and thus had to do my return flight on less than three hours of sleep.|Despite the other problems, I probably could have given this three stars if not for the terrible location and noise problem. But as it was, there just weren’t enough redeeming qualities about the place to compensate for that as well as the other issues that I experienced. I feel bad saying it because staff up front were kind, but it’s the truth. I had a great time in Lebanon. Despite official advice to the contrary, I encourage people to visit the country, provided they know what they’re doing. But I would strongly advise looking for a different hotel than this one.
