First the positives. I am staying here for two weeks on a business trip. I booked a room on the club floor, and It is large and fairly quiet. The beds are comfortable and the bathroom is spacious with pleanty of shelves. There are nice bathrobes and BThe staff is pleasant and friendly and the service is good. When I ordered an iron, it came in 3 minutes. We had a very good meal in the Thai restaurant . The complimentary breakfast on the club floor is good with a nice selection of breads, fruit, cereals and juices. You can order eggs and there are sausages, potatoes and pancakes. In the afternoon one can get tea sandwiches and they have hot appetizers for evening happy hour. One nice touch is that you can order a drink (alcohlic or non) as late as 11:00 p.m.
They have just opened a new ladies gym (men & women work out separately here) and there are lots of new exercise machines and a very welcoming staff. They have few customers right now, but perhaps this is because they are so new.
Now for the glitches. The closets are SMALL with only 18" of hanging space for your clothes. There is adequate drawer storage, but forget about trying to hang much. I can't imagine who designed this as it is not at all comparable to rest of the room. The bathroom is beautiful, but when you turn on the faucet at the sink, the water shoots out and floods the whole counter. They need some kind of filter as it is not fun to have water all over your cosmetics, etc. Then there is the shower--very nice--separate and enclosed with one of those rainfall shower heads. Only problem is the shower leaks water all over the floor no matter how careful you are. They do give you big fluffy towels and you need one to mop up the floor. And--my biggest gripe--is that we were told that we could not bring anything from the Club Lounge back to our room as they wanted us to "use the minibar." Since I am paying extra for club access, I believe I should be able to bring the occasional Coke back here. Just my two cents.
The internet here is wireless ONLY and it is expensive and not all that reliable. When we first got here there were only 24 hour cards available for about $26 per day. After several days we were able to buy a one week card that brought the price down a little. There are ethernet ports in the rooms, but they are disabled and there are no wireless cards for rent. This is problematic for anyone with an older laptop.
All that being said, I am enjoying my stay at the Gulf.
