Hotel Borneo

The restaurant and the restaurant staff is excellent. They meet and exceed expectations, and the food is excellent.

The hotel is understaffed. There is no one at the reception. The role of the receptionist is performed by whomever is closest, waiter, bartender, literally, whomever is closest. The quality of the reception service is disappointing. The staff that is there really does try and work their best, but there is only so much that they can do, and this is something that is being felt. The safe in the room was broken, and while they tried to help, there was no one during a 7 day stay who's job was to maintain and fix such things to come and take a look. I ended up buying the batteries and replacing the batteries for the safe out of my own money, just to make the darn thing stop making terrible noise that it would make, as it's batteries were dead. I mentioned this, in a friendly manner to the staff, but there was no reimbursement for the batteries. The sheets were never changed during a 7 day stay (it was easy to keep track, because the covers had a distinct stain), despite their own rule book stating that the sheets are changed every 3 days.

We stayed just one night, passing through on our way back from Croatia to Romania. The location is great, outside the busy center of Belgrade and close to the Romanian border. The hotel room was super comfortable and clean, the bed was very comfortable and everything was just right. We had a parking spot reserved (5 mins walk on the corner of the street because it is in a pedestrian zone). We also ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and it was just amazing. Great waiter, excellent food, good prices. The breakfast, as it turns out was by order from a fixed menu with just a few options. However, we asked if we could get an extra egg instead of bread which we don't eat, and they accommodated perfectly. It was delicious. The wifi is strong as is the air condition, which was a saviour in the midst of a heat wave (temperatures were 35 even at night).

The room smelled strongly of scented air freshener which immediately gave us an allergy, we couldn't stop sneezing so we took it out of the room to the hallway. Once out of the room we could smell traces of cigarette smoke on everything, the clean towels, the sheets, the rugs. Turns out in Serbia almost everyone smokes, everywhere... (the room is non-smoking and there's even a sign but I guess the cleaning staff smokes, possibly also by the laundry). The hotel restaurant, which is excellent as I mentioned above, is also smoke filled. The law allows smoking inside bars and restaurants in Serbia and this made for a very unpleasant experience despite the staff friendliness and excellent cuisine. The hotel has no elevator (we didn't realize that before we booked) and we were lucky to have a room on the first floor, but it's still not easy to drag suitcases up 2 flights of stairs.

Located at the very heart of the town, all the nice restaurants and necessary shops are really close. Hotel has its own restaurant on the ground floor, the menu is pretty big and food is tasty. Breakfast is included, although it is pretty simple. Room is cosy, has a huge tv and a big comfy bed. I absolutely enjoyed my stay there.

It may be a bit noisy from the bar on the other side of the street, but they finish around midnight so is ok. Also both times i tried to contact receptionist or get breakfast no one was there, there were no one to help me and someone came only after another guest had to knock on the kitchen door and almost entered it to ask for someone to help.