Fairmont Makkah Clock Royal Tower

What was good

We stayed during the peak period beggining of Jan 2020 and the hotel was busy. Check in and out took time as many guests were waiting or complaining about their rooms. When we checked in one of our rooms was a handicap room which we did not request and they could not accommodate us to another room due to the hotel being full so we had to wait next day to change rooms as we wanted to stay near the our kids room. For the amount we paid this was disappointing as we requested connected rooms as were a family of 6 and hotel did not plan this. The hotel reception stated they had just recently upgraded their hotel system and system was not accurately reflecting requests and rooms correctly what was ready and not ready promptly. During a peak period, why would a hotel change their IT system and risk customer satisfaction. The system one min showed the room was not ready and 5 mins later showed green ready. The receptionist was careful before he assigned us the room as they called housekeeping to make sure the room was ready. We had to change lifts to reach the Masjid al Haram which was fine but it meant waiting for elevators. The one thing that concerned me was security was relaxed as anyone can walk in and out of the hotel and to the rooms without a room key. Security was relaxed. The room sizes are good but they do need to clean their windows from the outside as you could not see the view due to the dirt smeared across the windows. The housekeeping team were good as we always saw them on our floor and we always got what we asked for but we had to ask. The facilities were nice as there is a gym sauna, stream room and small kids play area. The facilities were clean. The breakfast and dinner buffet had a good choices but breakfast buffet was the busiest. It was hard to get the servers attention. We did walk around to compare other hotels nearby how was the access to the Masjid and we found this hotel was the easiest to access the Masjid al Haram.

What was bad

Lack of Security and hotel customer service during check in and out. There was queue of 6 people and only one receptionist was working at times. Once the manager took notice when he returned, he panicked and went to back room and all of the sudden one person appeared to help the one person trying to serve the queue of people waiting.