Find the Cheap Tanjung Balai Hotels

Booked a deluxe superior room (the expensive room) via hotels.com, because we wanted to take the ferry from Tanjung Balai to Malaysia. The hotel offers a discount of 50% for 1 night if you take the ferry. Although paying by cash and the ferry ticket office next door claiming that we would be eligible for the discount, the hotel refused. The reason: we should first have bought the ferry ticket. Besides this: the first day we arrived: the bed sheets were dirty (fresh coffee stains, etc.); sheets were replaced, then we found out that the pillow sheets were also dirty. On one pillow sheet we even had a dirty footprint. Also floor not clean. The offered another room: even worse: the bed sheet was dirty with stains you don't want to know what I think it was. We took back the first room en requested them to clean and replace the sheets. We stayed for two nights. The wifi speed is sometimes too slow for streaming video. Horrible thing: every 5-15 minutes your wifi connection expires, even when browsing the internet, requiring you to retype the login name and password every time! Besides this the login/password changes every 24 hours and you don't know when. In the two days we were there, the key card to our room was not working for two times. According to the website toiletries are provided, however we only had a set of toiletries for 1 person, and it was soap to wash your hands with; we didn't bother to report this anymore. Staff did not apologize for anything. I believe the problem of the hotel is bad management. The reception/house holding staff seemed friendly, but are inexperienced and not well-trained. There's for sure no quality checks on the rooms. The two deluxe superior rooms we saw are in the middle of the building and do not have windows. The room we stayed in was located on the same floor as the conference/party rooms, and party noise travelled to our room. The only good things: bathroom was clean. Breakfast is from 6 to 10, but at 9 all the food is cold (they don't cover the pans of the buffet). We saw someone walking around and doing checks for the food, but only by eye. Breakfast buffet variation is average, but a common thing as eggs is missing. The interior design of the restaurant is nice. This hotel is certainly not 'grand', except for the price/quality-ratio. The price of the deluxe superior room for about US$ 40 is quite expensive for this town in Indonesia, but the the hotel performs way below 3 stars (I would rate it a 1 star at the most at this moment). We will never stay there again, and I advice you to skip it if you can. Maybe better options in Kisaran. The problem is that this hotel is the only hotel in reasonable vicinity of the city center and ferry ticket office. If you need to stay there, just take a cheaper room, do not pay in advance or by credit card and first check the room, sheets, etc.

The service is very satisfactory, the customer service is very enthusiastic, and the room is very clean