Theatro

I stayed for two nights in this centrally located hotel. The windows are double glazed but you can hear street noise. It was warm but the air con was temperamental and worked for a while and then stopped. I was glad not to share the room as the bathroom has clear glass doors. Toiletries and slippers are provided and there’s a small hairdryer in the bathroom. There’s a small lift and the wifi was good. The hotel provides a buffet style breakfast and while there is a staff member providing coffee, you need to request this as he doesn’t move from the coffee machine. The best thing about the hotel is the central location, a short walk from Skanderbeu Square and the main street where there are plenty of places to eat.

This is definitely not a 4 star hotel. Maybe it was 50 years ago, but not now. The location is its selling point. It’s a short walk from the main square and has plenty of shops and restaurants around it. The hotel itself is small and dated. We stayed in a twin room which had tiny beds and was terribly designed. The bathroom faced the beds - you had to squeeze around one of them to get into the bathroom. The door was a sliding glass door which was almost entirely transparent. Couples might like to give each other a show I suppose, but with friends sharing a room it’s just awkward. If you go to the bathroom in the night and turn on the light it illuminates the whole room and wakes up the other person. The air con was centrally controlled so you couldn’t change the temperature. It was never cold enough. The tv was not a smart tv and only had three working channels. A German kids channel, a German sports channel and one Albanian channel. We were told someone was going to come and retune for more channels (this function was locked for us) but they never arrived. The fridge gave off more heat than it cooled anything down. Not working properly. We had one curtain at the balcony door. The mattresses are just placed on top of the bed so slide all over the place when you move. Breakfast was basic and stone cold. It felt like it had all been sitting out too long. No coffee to be seen. The hotel states it has free private parking but in reality it has about 3 spaces and then they send you to a lot. That was full too when we arrived so we had to leave the keys with the man who ran it so he could try and squeeze it in. The staff were all very young and spent most of the time sitting on the sofas in the lobby playing on their phones. The desk was unmanned when we tried to check in and check out. We waited for a full five minutes to check in. One guy was on the sofa and saw us but was obviously too busy on his phone to fetch the appropriate colleague. When the girl arrived to check us out she was helpful and printed our boarding passes for us. But most of the time you have to go and find someone and feel like you are inconveniencing them by asking for help. I would say this is a 2/3 star hotel. I would not stay here again