Name: Howard Luits
Address: 353 Chang Chun Road, Taipei 105, Taiwan R.O.C., Taipei, Taipei, Taipei, 105, Taiwan
Rating: 9

Location

Taipei Songshan Airport

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport

Howard Luits

I was expecting a mediocre hotel stay but this has definitely exceeded that. The staff make this hotel. They are efficient, friendly, and very hard working- they go out of their way to help their guests and I doubt they realize how unusually good they are. Breakfast is good too.

The kitchen is handy for making a cup tea and sitting on the cozy sofa after a long day. All the staff are friendly and nicely. The location of the hotel is convenient to go many places, there’s a supermarket just by the side, quite a few good restaurants are around that area. Howard Garden Suites is like our home in Taipei.

After 2 years of deteriorating stays at Sunworld Dynasty Hotel, our local office admin selected this hotel as contract hotel for 2017.  Wow, what great find!!!

Howard Garden Suites, now known as Howard Serviced Suites, is the extended-stay brand of the Howard Hotels - a local hotel chain staple.  This hotel consist of apartment-like suites, in 1 bed, 2 bed, and studio configurations, with a kitchenette and separate living room.  In addition to the lobby being modern and chic, the rooms are also stylish, well appointed and just very practical.  Housekeeping staff does an amazing job and keep the place spotless, so much so that as a guest, I wanted to do everything I can to keep the place clean and exercise utmost care to keep this awesome for years to come.

The hotel offers a breakfast included rate, which covers a very comprehensive breakfast buffet.  The breakfast has Western, Chinese and Japanese spreads, as well as a refrigerated salad and separately refrigerated fruit station.  They kept each style of breakfast to the core items but because of the multiple styles, there are a large variety of things to try.  The food quality is exceptional that I will rank it at a 4 or 5-star hotel level cooking.  In addition to breakfast, the hotel offers afternoon tea service that consist of some tasty sweet and savory snacks, hot teas and espresso-based coffee drinks.

The staff is also amazing here.  They are efficient, warm, and extremely helpful and kind.  I had a two-week long stay, consist of 2 reservations with a gap between to which I had to leave Taipei for a day.  The staff kept the reservation details exactly right, stored my luggage and subsequently moved it to the new room without I even had to say anything - this is some seriously good service.

I rarely give 5-star ratings but this hotel truly earned it in my book.

Stayed in the hotel for 6 nights. Staff are approachable and room is clean. Location is near MRT station and there are quite a few nice places to eat nearby. 
Breakfast is basic, with limited choice of porridge, cereal, bread n juices. 

I would have given Excellent rating if only the staff are smiling more. They are handling the guests very professional but a little bit too serious and they might forget to smile otherwise everything would be perfect. The property are maintained very well, the breakfast are delicious and the location is great too. I've been staying here for years now and I will keep coming back. I recommend this place

Taipei

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The staff makes this hotel

Home sweet home

Holy hidden gem!

Clean and easily accessible hotel

more Smiles will be perfect

Ironically, I am writing an update to warn other guests after I had given it a 5-star rating on a previous review...  I've stayed at this hotel many many times, as our company contracted property for business travel.  It pains me to give it a such low score but I was left with no choice and this is more of a public service to other guests.  Please see the attached pictures to judge for yourself.  (I couldn't post all because some of the bitten area is not suitable to be posted.)

During my latest stay, I was bitten by ticks or fleas repeatedly, on and around my lower extremities.  The bites increased as my stay went on and worsened dramatically over the weekend, during which I stay indoor at the hotel to catch up on my work.  I didn't have any bug bite just before arriving at this hotel and also did not incur any additional bites after I left here and continued my trip to a different hotel in a different country.

As a frequent business traveler, I am very well experienced at keeping myself and luggage "clean", I always have the luggage in an isolated and higher from the ground area, to prevent transfer of potential bugs from one hotel to another hotel, or worse yet, take them back home with me...  I have not had a bug bite for at least 7+ years as a result of hotel stays, so I am 110% sure the issue occurred here at the Howard Garden (Serviced) Suites.

This unfortunate situation was compounded by the lack of care exhibited by the staff when I reported the issue myself and through my office admin who is responsible for selecting hotels.  The hotel's initial attitude was that I must brought them with me, which is not true - I was spotless when I arrive and remained so for at least 2 days, so the initial bite occurred here.  During my entire trip (8 days), I went to work for long hours and just came back to the hotel to sleep late at night.  On the weekend, I stayed indoor in the hotel 99% of the time, sans a quick 3-min trip to the grocery store literally next door to get some food and itch medicine.  I did not play tourist and expose myself to the nature or whatever, to bring back the bites.

The hotel likely didn't believe my claim and reviewed their security camera footage but only to confirm I indeed did stay in door for the entire weekend.  The hotel appeared to have traced my whereabouts and said I spend a couple of hours in the (indoor) lounge area where they serve breakfast and afternoon tea and suggested that mine wearing shorts was the cause.  I was wearing knee-length American style shorts and it only seem reasonable in the super hot and humid summer weather.  After that, the hotel then went to suggest it's mosquito bites that's common in Taiwan, which I disputed.  The clustered bite pattern, isolation to lower extremities, redness, and pain is a strong indication that they were bites from ticks (or fleas) and not mosquitoes.

Given there was a storm of reports of fatal tick bites, I was really worried about the potential fallout of this issue.  I explained these concerns to the hotel in both English and Chinese, but they made no attempt to address it nor even suggest I go to the doctor to get checked out. All they were saying is no one else had the issue and maybe it's the plants and flowers they just installed in the lounge area, in a clear attempt to ease our office admin's concern and try to prevent losing our business more than my well-being and health.  It has been more than 4 weeks, the scarring from these bites are still very visible and red, and are daily reminder of this issue.

In addition, i almost had to defend myself within our company against the hotel's downplay of the incident, and distribute the attached pictures to show the seriousness of the issue.  Surely, I will not stay here again if I can help it as there are plenty of other hotels in the area.

Howard Luits

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For corporate clients