Vogue Boutique Hotel in Vlore

I feel very conflicted about this place. In general, I think the owners don’t know what a boutique hotel is - it is more than just fancy-ish, modern furniture.

Our room was quite small. The toilet did not have a seat and it smelled like rotten eggs when we checked in. Immediately, we told the owner about these two things. The rotten eggs - no idea what it was. The toilet seat had been broken a few days before and they had ordered a new seat, which hasn’t arrived. Fair enough. We asked if we could change rooms. The owner (?) went to check (with whom was unclear) and did not come back for quite a while. We wanted to get on with our day and tried finding him, being told he was at the beach. Just when we were like “what the heck, let’s just go and forget it”, he came back. We were fine not changing rooms, but nothing was offered from their site (like reimbursing some money, drinks on the house or whatever). So I said that we would be fine with this, but we’d appreciate a drink on the house (they have a rooftop bar; spoiler alert: whenever we went there in the evening, nobody was there to serve drinks).

Also, breakfast. Breakfast is very fatty. On our third day, we considered skipping brekkie and eating somewhere else. There was some filter coffee, served in shot-sized paper cups, but we wanted a cappuccino/espresso or whatever. So the first few days we ordered those, until on the very last day, when the owner (?) was there, telling us that espressi, cappuccino etc. were extra. The other staff members had not mentioned this the days before. By that point we had, of course, not gotten any drinks as a sorry for the toilet seat and smell in the room. So I got a little irritated, saying that we won’t pay for that, considering he had promised us drinks on the house. He was fine, but never served us cappuccinos - instead, he directed me toward the complimentary watery filter coffee served in paper cups.

All in all, this hotel has a lot of potential, but seems to rest on the “boutique” in its name. The service can definitely be improved.