Christmas Hotel

I styed here in March of this year with a group of people on a pilgrimage. My room was spotless, comfortable bed, and balcony that over looked the old anglican church . The style of the property is like a cosy old house, lots of sofas downstairs. The food presented well and a wide selection of choice for every meal including dessert. Service in the dining room and reception excellent. Smaller hotel but has beautiful garden at the rear to relax in. The garden tomb , old city wall, bus station and shops are all a short walk away makine this hotel and excellent base for pilgrims and other travllers.

I was travelling in a large group of 50 people and spent 5 nights in the Christmas hotel in Jerusalem last week having travelled through the wonderful country of Israel. I was looking forward to staying here as the reviews were reasonable. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Rooms- small but clean. Bath minute I could not sit in the bath. There were no normal toiletries - shower caps, tissues. The hair dryer was a wall dryer and if you have long hair you would have burnt hands by the time you finished as the dryer handle got so hot. Definitely a health and safety issue. There was no drinking water in the room and the tap water was not safe to drink or clean your teeth. No safe in the room so you had to go down stairs and use the safe in the lobby. Fine if the staff were there but they often were not so it was an great inconvenience. Food- well where do you begin. Breakfast was very poor. When you are in a country which grows wonderful fruit there was very little on offer. Apples and oranges if the oranges hadn’t all disappeared. The selection for a cooked breakfast was very poor and cool if not cold. Less is more as the expression goes. The bread was either still frozen and in chunks or stale. The variety of bread in Israel is amazing but I felt as if we were being served Tesco’s basic bread all the time. Dinner was also very basic which is absolutely fine provided that it was tasty but it was unimaginative and tasteless. If you moved close to the kitchen you could smell that the staff were smoking in there which I was surprised at. I had no sense of any pride being taken in the food being offered. I like a glass of wine with my meal. If I wanted one I had to go to the bar to get one. There was no waiter service. To be fair if you didn’t finish your bottle of wine you could keep it in your room until the next night but the waiters refused to get you a wine glass saying you had to get your own from the bar. The staff were surly. Reception well there’s an experience. The staff either weren’t there or were on their phones so you could wait several minutes before you were acknowledged. Room keys were left on the reception counter so if you were passing by you could pick up any key and break into a room. One day I deliberately put my key on the staff work station so it was out of reach and I saw the staff member pick it up and put it on the counter so it was easily accessible. Also from a health and safety point of view we sometimes wanted to go out really early say 6am to wander around Jerusalem but couldn’t get out of the hotel as the doors were locked. No staff member around. What would have happened in the event of a fire? From a plus point it was 10 minutes from the Damascus gate and about 6 minutes from heroes gate. Would I go back? Unlikely although with the knowledge I now have I would know to take a hairdryer and only book B and B at best. Even a local cafe would be better than the food we were served. I hate complaining but my trip was expensive so I did not feel I had value for money at all..