Occidental Sousse Marhaba in Sousse

I honestly don’t understand how this hotel is rated 4 stars. The layout is ridiculous — you take the elevator up to your floor, then walk a long distance down multiple sets of stairs just to reach your room. I changed rooms and still ended up with more stairs. Completely inconvenient, especially with luggage.

Inside the room, things get worse:
• Air-conditioning doesn’t work — technician came, but nothing improved.
• No kettle provided, even though this is basic in any hotel.
• No proper double bed — just two singles pushed together.
• Room is old, dirty, and poorly maintained.

The only acceptable part was the breakfast with a decent variety.

But everything else was so bad that although I paid for two nights, I could only tolerate one night before leaving to another hotel. Absolutely not recommended.

Not a Nice Experience We have just returned home from a 10 night stay here, and will never return. This is an honest account and apologies for the length of the review. If it wasn’t for the few staff and Pros I’ve listed below I would have only given 1 star. Cons Reception Apart from Amin and another older gentlemen, staff are rude, they shrug their shoulders at you, fob you off, tell you to go away and generally can’t be bothered, unless it’s changing money. Hotel manager is extremely rude and unhelpful. There is no welcome they don’t tell you meal times or where anything is. Rooms We were put in a really grotty room overlooking the roof of the restaurant. We later found out from talking to other guest there. Other groups had to be moved out of this room too. Wall lights were not working. Balcony door had gaps in it and we could hear the fans that were on the restaurant roof. A/c wasn’t working and it was making loud noises all night. We switched it off, but because it was so hot we had to open balcony door and we had the fan noise. We did not sleep a wink that night. Next morning I asked the manager to be moved. As we had on our booking form a “garden view” I asked to be moved down to the other block of rooms. He shouted back at me that it wasn’t possible due to my mum being disabled. I said to him that where we were was not acceptable due to the fan noise and the A/c not working etc. He shouted again and said “what do you expect me to do?”. There were others who had disabilities that were in that block but he wasn’t having any of it. Eventually he moved us to 1st floor at the front end on the same block. The toilet light wasn’t working and the Tv wasn’t working and we could still hear the fan noise. I reported the room problems to a woman on Reception who said someone would be up later to repair. I explained that I was concerned for my mother falling due to lack of light in toiket and because there was a leak from the toilet hose. Floors are tiles very slippery. Anyway no one came that night. After 6 requests and 2 days later someone eventually came. He told us he would go to see about the TV and asked us to wait 10 minutes, 40 minutes later we were still waiting. I went to Reception who rang him and we were told that the TV doesn’t work in all the rooms. The light went again a couple of days later and actually fell out of the ceiling. My mother did slip on the floor at 2.50am in the bathroom and fell hitting her head /knee and foot, I could not call Reception as the room phone wasn’t connected, I had to go to Reception to ask someone to come and help me lift her off the floor. Towels in rooms seem to be another problem there weren’t any in there when we arrived and it then became a problem every day. They do not replace the ones they take away and you are constantly asking Reception for them. I was literally sitting on the toilet when a man and maid walked in, my mother told them to come back in 10 minutes but the insisted