Mandarin Oriental, Jakarta
The flashiest hotel of Jakarta. They recently modernized the entire hotel with a multi-million dollar budget. It truely looks impressive now, very modern. The public areas are a bit small and dense though like the lobby and pool.
The place certainly has potential but currently they “suffer” from a fresh hired staff. Around half of them lack character and got confused by a few simple tasks I confronted them with. First to tell you about a very positive thing they managed for me : they helped me getting back my mobile phone which I lost in a taxi. Luckily the Blue Bird and Silver Bird taxi group is excellent in returning lost items which I doubt would ever happen in Bangkok. The hotels also always note the taxi numbers and their arrival and leaving point of time. So even if you don’t know your taxi number, you must know exactly when you left from A to B. I got it back soon which saved me a lot work because I noted plenty of info there which I tried to restore by memory painfully soon after.
I think I am writing positive enough mostly so I also have to write the critical stuff. They messed up my arrival. I had prepaid my room in cash a week before, I even had a pre-confirmed room number. But still when arriving at the executive lounge at 3pm they let me wait 1 hour and told me that the windows were about to get cleaned, exactly the ones of my room currently ! Bad luck ? Moreover they fucked up my drive to Bandung and gave me a poor driver who got lost all the time and it seemed he drove with a really slow average speed. No comparison with my excellent and charismatic driver Mr. Chettha in Bangkok – that are worlds… I hope for the Mandarin Oriental that they improve the service quality of half of their staff rigorously, otherwise I will just stop by for Mo Bar visits.
The person I liked most there is Mr. Kramer, the restaurant manager. It is too funny that he worked with and is befriended with Mr. Lehfeld, the Biscotti restaurant manager of Four Seasons Bangkok. I met him and exchanged business cards with him as well on the recent trip. Both are extremely friendly and capable managers. It is a small world in hospitality in SEA for sure. Mr. Knuepfer currently works for the Dhara Devi, Chiang Mai. The Mandarin Oriental Jakarta also has a German front desk manager, Ms. Rohm whom I never saw/met. I was impressed of Ms. Febrianti who sold the room to me and whom I regard as an outstanding representative of the hotel, you also see her in the video. Manager is Irish Mr. Abram. Don’t read my review too negative. I am not getting paid by Four Seasons. I simply want to help improving such a great “hardware” place.
http://www.vimeo.com/11385319
Popularity: unranked
