Bryan Graham

Review of Ramada Plaza Bangkok Menam Riv...

This is NOT a five star hotel; if you adjust your ...

This is NOT a five star hotel; if you adjust your expectations to a three or maybe four star hotel it is okay.

They could not find me in the system at check-in and I had to provide my own proof of confirmation. Some of the other guests and I had to ask multiple times for issues to be resolved. For example: it took several calls and about two hours for one of the other guests to get their luggage (and to get access back to their medication).

The staff has poor attention to detail. I asked for an iron and ironing board and I was given a broken ironing board I had to assemble myself. The shower head was positioned by the cleaning staff to blast water everywhere in the bathroom when first turned on; a five star hotel staff would take the additional moment to turn the shower head appropriately so the guest doesn't have the experience of shooting water everywhere. It took 5 hours for my room to get made up after clicking the button on the control box to request that my room be made up.

The hotel (built in 1986) is showing its age a bit. The handle of the toilet needed to be held down to get anything to flush, and I had to call to get the toilet fixed because it simply stopped flushing. The television picture quality is very poor; most of the channels have a lot of picture distortion (and this was not limited to my room or floor). Most guests complained about their rooms being either way too hot or way too cold, and the control box is not easy or straightforward to use. The layout of the standard room also doesn't make a lot of sense to me, in particular it bothered me that the sink was in the main area instead of the bathroom and there was no place to keep a trash bin near the sink.

The location on the river is nice. Most of the things we did in Bangkok were at least a 30 minute drive away, but the ASIATIQUE mall is about a 10 minute walk and they have a tuk-tuk shuttle there as well. The hotel has a decent central location.

If I had not gone in expecting five star service, this hotel would be okay. But, I had stayed in two other five star hotels during my trip in Thailand and got nothing like the level of service I expected at the Ramada Plaza Menam Riverside.