I am always lucky with my hotel choices. Or maybe it has nothing to do with luck. You see, I always do my research before I book a certain hotel. And so far, all the hotels we’ve stayed at are quite nice and conveniently located.

For our Dubai stopover, I booked our hotel at Suite Novotel Mall of the Emirates. I chose this hotel because it’s near Mall of Emirates. Second it’s a lot cheaper compared to Kimpinski and Pullman Hotel which are also near Mall of Emirates.

The rate I got for a 1-bedroom suite was $130/night without breakfast. I thought it was a really good deal because the room we got was big. And it had two flat screen TV.

 These pictures are from their website. I was happy that these pictures were the same with the actual room.

 At the lobby. You can see the Reception desk at our back.

 This is at the hotel’s entrance. We were on the way to the mall.

What I like about this hotel:
1) Location. It’s walking distance to Mall of Emirates.
2) Good rate. Actually, the rate of the other hotels in that area ranges from $300-1000/night.
3) Big room
4) Easy to get a taxi

What I did not like:
1) We checked in past midnight (due to delayed flight from Paris). I expected a swift check-in but we waited for 30 minutes to get our room. The receptionist was inefficient. He demanded a full payment because from their system our reservation was not paid yet. I showed him my copy of the voucher which clearly stated it was a prepaid booking. Still, it took him several minutes to sort out the problem.

2) After a whole day out, I expected a clean room when we got back. But I had to call housekeeping because the room wasn’t cleaned yet. After the housekeeping girl cleaned the room, she said “please call tomorrow if you want your room cleaned because we are really busy”. I had to laugh at her audacity. LOL!

Anyway, these two minor “bad” experiences did not really ruin our stay. We still had a perfectly good stopover in Dubai. I just hope Suite Novotel also invests on training their staff.