The Park Plaza Orchid Hotel Tel Aviv is centrally located next to the Tel Aviv beach. After arriving from TLV airport in the afternoon we wanted a place to stage ourselves before heading to Jerusalem and so we chose the Park Plaza. It also gave us an opportunity to burn 44,000 Club Carlson points for two nights instead of the nightly rate of $200. An extensive buffet style breakfast was included.
This hotel is actually an Orchid Hotel, an Israeli chain, that simply co-branded as a Park Plaza to gain more guests. There was no obvious branding other than a small sign in the lobby, and virtually no branding in the room. The representative at the counter seemed offended that I asked if we had been upgraded. Given that this hotel was co-branded I should have known better to not have asked.
That was only the beginning of the terrible experience we had at the hotel. The room was incredibly dated. There were signs of wear on the furniture and holes in the sheets. The bathroom smelled like urine and the source could not be determined. There was also a smell of fermenting sewage coming from the sink and the shower wall was lined with mildew. If you got too cold, you couldn’t adjust the thermostat since the ‘+’ button was missing from the socket.
We spent one night in the room and couldn’t take another, so we went to the lobby and asked to be switched to a different room. After some typing on the keyboard, the manager on duty said there weren’t any more rooms available. The hotel was completely full. We explained to her in great detail the dilapidated nature of the room and told her that it was perhaps the worst Club Carlson room we’ve ever stayed in and we’re Club Carlson Gold. She eventually relented and gave us a different room. The room was the exactly the same except for the bathroom, which had been recently remodeled.
The saving grace of the hotel was the free breakfast, but I wouldn’t stay here again. Tel Aviv is an expensive hotel market but I’d rather pay cash elsewhere instead of spending 44,000 Club Carlson points here. It was a complete disaster.
This is a part of the series on Chasing Club Carlson Hotels Around the World.