Theranda Boutique Hotel

Ok location. Bit of a hard spot to find. Clean room. Poor attitude off guy on front desk. Would I stay again? Think I'd just look elsewhere

We are not demanding guests. The room could otherwise be acceptable, although the fridge was broken, the towel rack fell apart when touched. The breakfast was 8:15-10:30. When we arrived at 8:15, there was nothing and no one in the dining room. A lady came, some time behind us, and set the table for us (a school bench!!), then we waited 15 minutes for her to bring us a tray with food. She asked us what we would like to drink and listed what we could choose. She brought us 2 cappuccinos and milk, as ordered. The milk still had ice chunks of milk in the glass. Later, when I was looking for the staff, because there was never anyone at the reception, to ask them not to park our car for the next day (the parking was a one-way where you parked your car one by one and hoped that you would have a clear way when you wanted to leave), I saw a room with one bed near the toilets on the ground floor, in it was the same lady who was cutting bread on the table, next to it was a machine for coffee, various bags of food, etc. In front of the entrance, cleaners etc. So there is no kitchen in the hotel. Most of the pictures are older, when the hotel was in better condition.

Chose this place as location is very very good and price was excellent. Cash is still king and using the speed taxi app made our lives much easier as a taxi from the airport was a fixed fee of 1500 lek Now onto the not so good stuff I understand you get what you pay for, but I didn't expect to spend time in the room trying to get rid of ants, getting bitten while asleep and the flush for the toilet hanging off the wall No plug sockets by the bed leaving us to unplug the fridge to be able to charge our mobile phones The shower has black mould and the shelf to put your items on inside is wobbly. After waking up to being bitten by something we stripped the bed to find the fitted sheet put over the mattress hadn't been cleaned - it had other hair and stains on from previous inhabitants! I wouldn't expect that from a homeless shelter let alone a supposed 4 star hotel (Google says it's 4 star) After mentioning to the lady on reception (who is lovely bless her) about the bites she said she would make sure the room was cleaned, later (less than 6 hours later) we had ants back in the room After she went home there is nobody to speak to here, the only two people I've seen I assume were residents as they were sitting in the lobby area playing on the playstation, for example on one of the nights, there were 4 people in reception on the playstation and nobody behind the desk. When we first arrived there was nobody on reception (I'll grant you it was before check in time) but then when we returned later on there was nobody again - only to find later on the nice lady on reception is helping the cleaner do her work! I don't know what happened to the place between the last good reviews and now but it's clearly not the same place I say again I don't think it's the fault of the lady on reception who did her best with clearly minimal resources. later on in the evening around midnight there were even more ants, when I spoke to the person on reception (there was someone there for the first time!) all he did was look perplexed and then brought a mop up and clean the area where the ants were - didn't get rid of the food remains in the corner where the ants were coming from - then disappeared. No apologies no words of affirmation that the problem would be solved, he just up and disappeared back downstairs. I also noticed that one of the fire extinguishers was out of date (still had 2022 and 2023 dates on it) which could be really dangerous It took until the day after (day 4 of our 5 day stay) and finally some fly spray was produced as a solution for our ant problem - amazingly enough it worked and worked really well as we didn't have another ant or bite for the rest of the stay. We were required by Tirana airport to print out our boarding passes ahead of time, which the lady sorted for us no problem in the morning of check out, as it seemed to difficult for the lad on reception the night before who told my partner to do it in the airport (and incur the 40+ euro fee in the process). I wanted to like this place a lot, theres a lot going for the place in regards to some staff and location (despite it's residential location feeling a bit dodgy if you aren't used to it) If it wasn't for the lady receptionist this place would have got a 1 star.