Carlton Tower Hotel, Baniyas Street Review

Overall Rating

The location was good; next to the creek and handy for the spice and gold souks.

The hotel is under renovation, and the pool was closed. The front of the hotel has shadecloth and scaffolding right over the exterior, and they are telling guests that all the tour operators and travel agents have been told about it. Well, Emirates never told us or any other guests. When you complain about noise etc., they just couldn't really care, which is not good.

This is an email I have sent to the hotel, but as expected they never even replied.

We arrived recently at your hotel, Monday 11th of September for three nights, and we were extremely disappointed with the room not being ready on our arrival, even though we had paid for it from 12 noon that day and didn't arrive until 3:45am the next morning. We were told that the air conditioning had just broken down (as if), and it couldn't have been fixed or another room made ready before we arrived, so we were told that we could wait in another smaller room, as we had paid for a triple room, while another room was getting ready, and were given free coffee and a room with a view of the creek to make up for this, and we would be in the other room for 4:20 - 4:30am, so at 5:15am we were taken to another room with our luggage, only to find that someone else was sleeping there and had the latch chain lock on the door, otherwise we would have walked in on them. We were then taken to another room (1002) this time, which was the one at the creek with the view to make up for the stuffing around. So, at around 6am and after approximately ten hours travelling, we managed to get to sleep At 10am, 4 hours later I was awakened by a workman on scaffolding outside my window hammering and banging and singing (and this was on the tenth floor). There was no privacy as we couldn't open the curtains as he was walking around outside on the scaffolding. The view was obscured by scaffolding and green shade cloth, and also the chances that the workmen could be there did not impress us. We did complain, only to be told that we could move rooms again, to one without a view, as the workmen were due back the following morning again, so we decided reluctantly (as it was only a three night stay and we were sick of the upheaval) not to move again. This was our first trip to Dubai, and our experience was not good, and it is a relief to be back in Australia. I will be contacting Emirates who we booked with, but we felt, to be fair that we should let you know first.