Muscat Plaza Hotel in Muscat

Location strategic, valuable hotel

hotel was wonderfully centrally located, with free parking along the roads outside the hotel. most amenities provided however the body wash and shampoo bottles were so small they were only enough for 1 shower. you can request for more but idk how to operate the in room telephone as there were no information to contact the reception so you had to go down personally to the reception to request. wifi connection was also pretty bad, very intermittent.

Booked this for our 1st time visit to Oman and we stayed here for 12 days.
If you are only staying 2-3 days this hotel may be ok - but for longer stays I would not recommend.
Positives:
Great location if you like genuine Asian food - excellent cheap and mid-price restaurants within a few minutes walking distance - Indian Vegetarian and non-veg restaurants too.
Mosque within walking distance
Friendly helpful cleaning staff - most of them try their best to make your stay comfortable.
Very big room sizes
Good Wifi
Comfortable beds.
Free water bottles on request
Fairly easy to get OTaxi within 2-3 minutes each time.
Negatives:
Mould in the bathroom, water leaks out of the shower onto the main bathroom floor - making a slip hazard
No caddy in the shower to hold your soap or shampoo etc, so you have to keep bending down to the floor to get or put your shampoo bottle.
Shower pressure was very very low - so no refreshing shower after a long day out. It was enough to wash your body but takes several minutes (water was hot OK).
Some of the sockets in the room do not work - so you have to keep unplugging things to use something else.
When we asked for an iron, the gave us a barely functional one with steam controls missing and no heat level markings so you are scared to use it in case you get a shock and/or burn your clothes. The 1st ironing board we were given belonged in the bin - I am not exaggerating - the cover to the board was ripped in multiple places, and bits of metal were sticking out - guaranteed to rip your clothes when ironing. The 2nd ironing board was new but the cover did not stay in place - so you spent twice as long constantly re-adjusting the cover than ironing your clothes.
The hairdryer had a difference plug than the sockets in the room - luckily I had my own converter.
The access card for our room door kept resetting every single day for the 1st 6 days. Every evening we come back, go up to our room and the card does not work - so we have to go back down again to get the card programmed. One on evening, I had to go up and down the lift 4 times - yes 4 times - because the lady on reception seemed to hear the number 3 when I say 2 - I don't know how to confuse room xx2 for xx3 - English is my 1st language and I speak at conferences, and with English speaking colleagues and clients around the word every working day. Even though, the first two times I went down the card actually had a sticker with the room number on it - but she still managed to program the wrong room number twice. On the 3 visit, she gave me a new card - but still programmed the wrong room number. On the 4th visit she finally said 'ah you mean xx2 not xx3' - and then she laughed and shared a private joke with her colleague. I got the feeling she was bored of the job and liked to play games with the hotel guests to cheer herself up.
Eventually after 6 days of this, I complained to a male member of staff on the desk and he programmed the card once and it worked fine for the remaining days.
The small fridge freezer remained on 24x7 - even on the lowest setting - so you heard the constant buzzing sound all day and night. It even froze and ruined some of our fruit which was in the fridge section and not in the freezer section.
The batteries in the safety deposit box had corroded and you could not operate or program it. They gave us some keys for the safe, but they did not work properly - so we were scared to lock anything in the safe - in case you could not unlock it again - funny hah!
The shampoo and shower gel bottles were called something like Eco wash - but they were almost always only half full - so you had to use a single bottle of each every time you showered - so we probably used at least 45-50 bottles between us during our stay - what a waste of plastic.

It’s reasonably priced, and I have no particular complaints.

Nice place

Clean and hospitable

Good and spacious room