Abou Nawas Le Palace Hotel, Tunis, Tunisia
Hotel Information
Hotel Class:
Hotel Description:
Abou Nawas Le Palace is situated just 15 minutes from the airport and 20 minutes from the city centre of Tunis. Guest rooms are comfortable and well equipped with air conditioning, satellite television, mini bar, internet access and hairdryer. Guests can enjoy two restaurants, a wellness centre, gym and two swimming pools. Great for business as well as relaxation, the hotel offers conference rooms, a business centre and internet access points. Further facilities at Abou Nawas Le Palace include a shop, tennis court, laundry and hairdresser. loading...
Abou Nawas Le Palace Hotel Reviews
We visited Tunis on our honeymoon. We expected a warm reception from this “5*” hotel and at least some special treatment.
However, the fact that it was our honeymoon was acknowledged on the first day, but we were told that they had no time to decorate our room (despite having weeks of notice) and that this would be done the next day.
We waited and waited but no decoration (or anything else) was done. This was despite our travel agents calls to the hotel on many an occasion to ask if they were looking after the honeymoon couple.
The hotel’s response to this was to ask us (in a very accusatory tone) if there was a problem after every time that the travel agent called. They could not seem to understand that there was no problem as such, but that they had simply not gone the extra mile that we expected from a 5* hotel.
It must be noted that a probable 90% of the guests in this hotel appeared to be there on business. Yet, I believe that a 5* hotel should be able to cater for guests who are there on holiday too!
The hotel room itself was nice and spacious and we did have a balcony. It was cleaned every day and some of the maids were nice. It may sound picky, but there were some annoying inconsistencies, such as we only got chocolates on our pillow twice in the week, and only one robe was provided to us in our double room.
I think if you pay for a 5* hotel then you have the right to be picky!
Breakfast at the hotel was, again, at different standards each day. The good points were that: there was an omelette chef to make eggs on demand; there were fresh pastries available.
However, the bad points were as follows: if someone was given a pot of coffee and a jug of milk, the waiters poured the leftovers back into jugs and gave it to the next person; there was little fresh fruit (something that we found all over Tunis actually).
The waiting staff were less than helpful and did not bring you plates or cutlery if required; you could not tell what the quality of the food would be like from one day to the next.
One day we tried the lunch buffet at the hotel. This was actually very good, but you had to get there early because none of the dishes were replaced. It was expensive but we found that it had a good range of dishes and nice authentic Tunisian food.
Another warning for this hotel is not to use the beauty/ spa facility. My wife booked a pedicure, as she had seen a flyer in the hotel room that said it cost 10-15 Dinars.
However, when she actually went to the appointment she was told that the price had now changed to 30-40 Dinars! There was no apology or explanation for this and the staff seemed upset that we would even suggest paying the price that we had seen it advertised for!
The fitness room is reasonable, but consists mainly of a bike, a running machine and a couple of weights machines. The hammam room is also OK as long as you don’t mind stale steam and not much else.
Basically everyone in the hotel seemed to want to get money out of you. Don’t get us wrong, if we have good service then we are more than happy to give a big tip and pay a fair price. But we do not like people thinking they can just get at our cash for doing nothing. However, this may not have only been the attitude at the hotel but in Tunis in general.
There was a very large issue with the taxi service with the hotel. When you get to the airport, get into a yellow taxi, not a white one. Check that the tariff is number 1 if before 9pm and tariff 2 afterwards (it will be 30% - 50% more). Do not pay more than what is written on the meter, and it should start at 0.380 dinars (at the time of writing.)
To give you an idea, the taxi journey to the airport cost 2.5 dinars. The way to the hotel cost 15 dinars once the meter fare had been doubled! However, it is often difficult to flag down taxis on the main street.
We experienced a scam on the first day where a local followed us and pretty much forced us into his friend’s shop to buy expensive perfume. To make matters worse he would not leave us alone, followed us into a restaurant and ordered a meal for himself (unbeknown to us.)
He then forced us to pay for his meal and we did as we were quite scared at this point.
Despite having done this, he still started a fight with me because I wouldn’t pay for him to have beer! It seems harsh to say so but do not befriend anyone or even talk to anyone in this city! I’m not normally so cynical.
Finally, some comments on Tunis in general- don’t be fooled by the promise of warm climate and exotic scenery. This is a 3rd world country and it is dirty, scary and not exotic at all! The weather is changeable in April: it is nice but not that hot.
If you are going to stay here then we would advise to stay at a hotel nearer to the medina, as this would be more central. Examples are Africa and El Hana, though may be even worse.
The common sites to go and see are Carthage and the Bardo museum. Carthage was mostly a waste of time- all the good things to see had been taken out of here and put in the Bardo museum, which was fantastic! There was so much to see here that it was hard to take it all in.
If you appreciate beautiful mosaics and ancient statues then you will be fascinated by this place.
There were some good cheap restaurants in the city centre. One good restaurant on Avenue Bourguiba was called Capitole. Avenue Bourguiba is the centre of the city and is a useful place to shop, eat or drink.
Other good restaurants were found on Avenue de Marseille. A bad restaurant near the hotel was called Le Duc- they seemed to give good food to the locals but we ordered the same dishes and got something that looked totally different!
Also on Rue Ghana which runs next to the hotel are plenty of shops to buy water, cafes (much better for coffee) and good places to smoke chicha in the evening if you’re male.
Café des Banques is very good, and much preferable to the hotel coffee.