Trip to Macau - November 2014
Review of Hotel Royal Macau

We booked a few nights at Hotel Royal Macau using an online travel agency and upon arrival the check in was fast. We got room 610 and the room was quite modern when entering the room. To start with there were light tiles on the floor and they were replaced by a light carpet in the rest of the room. The carpet seemed a bit dirty so it was good to see that there were slippers available. The walls had a light yellow wall paper and the furniture was in walnut colored wood. Instead of getting a king-size bed we got two beds and they were comfortable even if they were very firm! The desk included a chair but also an empty fridge – and a water boiler with a couple of cups and tea/coffee. The TV was a fairly large and included a lot of channels but the sound quality was pretty bad. There was also a recliner chair and the walls had some nice art work. The view from our room was not great – we looked straight into a high rise building that seemed to have been abandoned in the building process.

The bathroom was also pretty decent with light tiles and a dark sink top and it was also great to see that an area of the mirror was heating so that it didn’t fog up during showering. There was also a nice set of amenities including tooth brush, shaver, sewing kits ut also the regular shampoo, shower gel and lotion. The bathtub had a shower option and a shower curtain to avoid water from splashing – this is not my favorite but at least it avoids water splashing. The hotel also features a gym with a pool and the gym was not bad with 4 treadmills.

The location of the hotel is great – depending of what you are doing in Macau. If you are there just for gambling it might not be great but if you want to explore the historic city center the hotel location is not bad.

Breakfast was not bad at all with a selection of bread, cereal, oat meal, various hot dishes and an egg and noodle station. I would have liked to see more fruit and not only a bit of water melon. So what is not that great about this hotel? Well, first of all it is located a bit away from the city center if there is such a thing and we had to use a taxi to get around. That is not really a problem but the experience in Macau was that it was not very easy to get a taxi at the hotel and the taxi line outside the entrance was not very organized and the hotel staff did not seem to be of much help. There is a hotel shuttle bus and that is convenient if you are e.g. going to Grand Lisboa casino or to the ferry terminal.

Another annoying thing was the lifts. There are only three lifts serving 17 floors and at rush hour (e.g around breakfast time) it would take quite a while before a lift would be available. The hotel had free wifi but it was not very good. You have to log in with the room number and use part of the surname as password. But it seems like it was only possible to log in with one device at the time and the wifi was slow and kept on dropping out.

The room did not have a safe which is quite unusual in these days. It is always handy to have a safe to place valuables, wallets and passport when you are out of the room. It would also have been great to have an iron and ironing board in the room. So the conclusion is that all in all this was not a bad hotel and the location is good if you want to see the historic center of Macau. But as you can see from my comments there were a few things that we were not happy with so I’m not sure if I would stay there again if I return to Macau. You can read more about the hotel on the official homepage. Please get in touch with me on gardkarlsen@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments. Feel free to check out the Macau trip report here.