Vip House Hotel

We booked a four night stay in a suite at VIP House Hotel, it looked ideal because it was centrally located along Nurzhol Boulevard. The hotel is located on 38th floor of Northern Lights 1 building and without directions would be difficult to find but thankfully the hotel sent directions and maps by WhatsApp before we arrived. We checked in late in the evening, it was quite an indifferent welcome, best described as perfunctory. We were allocated the India Suite which was incredibly spacious with fantastic views of the surrounding area. The living room had a full size dining table and chairs, the kitchen was fine but not suitable for full meals but there were reasonably priced restaurants close by. Unfortunately we had several issues at the front desk, we do not have a full understanding of Russian or Kazakh languages but we used a translation app which works perfectly fine everywhere else but one member of staff refused to speak to us using the app. This became a big issue because we couldn't communicate with the hotel. We were unable to have breakfast one morning because the staff member would blatantly dismiss us and asking basic questions was a massive task. We decided on day 3 to leave because without being able to communicate with the staff it wasn't worth staying. On the day that we left he lady on the front desk who we hadn't already met was incedibly gracious and was very upset we were leaving and tried her best to stop us from cancelling. In all fairness after a few phone calls with her supervisor we managed to get a full refund for the two cancelled nights. This is a fantastic recovery and we were grateful for the refund and their concern that we were not completely happy with our stay. There were alot of service deficiencies in Astana and a fair bit of negativity towards international tourists however I think the bad attitude from the member of staff was a one off and judging by the response from management it is not something that normally happens. I have scored the hotel quite highly as it is a lovely hotel with great facilities in the very heart of the city.