I cannot recommend New Day due to cost and quality. This is the hotel's current name, which has changed multiple times over the years. Hotel costs in Seoul are absurd as a rule, and this place was ~$70 USD per day, as one of the lower-cost choices in the area where I needed to be for my trip. When I stay in Tokyo, costs are less than half of this, in much higher-quality hotels. While one could attribute the cost here vaguely to "market dynamics", the fact is that this was not worth $70 per day, and a far lower cost would make this place deserving of a better rating. The personnel were very friendly and receptive. The problems with the building and the cost are not the fault of personnel, but rather, stem from questionable leadership decisions or apathetic leadership.
First, I requested the highest floor and a window. I did receive the highest floor...of the hotel. There is a floor above the highest floor, above where guests can stay. I requested the highest floor due to my problems with upstairs neighbour noise. Having the hotel's top floor did not eliminate upstairs neighbour noise. I did have a window, in the sense that there is a hole in the wall with glass, but it was entirely opaque, which makes it more like a wall decoration than an actual window. You cannot actually see outside of the window.
There was too much light in the room at night, from the aircon to the light switches which cannot be blocked. My aircon was held together with tape. It leaked and rattled. The sink also leaked. I was told that these are "normal" amounts leaking, but my understanding is that the normal amount of leaking from anything is always zero leaking. There was much disrepair or least-effort repairs everywhere, which would require a fundamental overhaul of every room to correct. Little flaws and stains everywhere, that diligent leadership would have corrected. Good hotel management stays in their empty rooms overnight on a regular basis, to see what guests all see, and to understand where housekeeping fails. I can tell that this hotel management principle is not applied here.
The restaurant next door causes charcoal cooking smell to enter the west side of the building, which is why the windows are what they are. This is not the hotel's fault. It merely explains why this building is a box with no proper windows in any room. This is worth considering if you want a room with a view. Having no window at all (a closet) would be identical to having the "window" here.
My biggest problem other than the cost (which should have been $20 USD at most per night for what you get) was the slamming doors. A simple foam or bristle strip on every door frame would mitigate this nuisance, but those are not on the doors, so every person coming and going slams their doors twice because there is an entry room for shoes with its own door, inside of the main door. Even trying to quietly close the door results in a slam noise; the doors are just designed poorly. I was awoken countless times from this problem.
The toilet situation was grim, too. No bidet, with a sign that says to not flush anything other than human waste (in Korean), inside of a bathroom with a transparent glass door, so no privacy. A ring of mould in the sink, which a quick toothbrush scrub once per week would fix. Holes in the walls had some mismatch tile slapped on where needed. A leaking sound could always be heard in the wall itself behind a light fixture which had no bulb in it. The quality of the walls in the toilet suggest that a major leak occurred here in the past, and that covering the problem was the approach taken.
There was a large comb with no packaging here when I arrived, next to a small container for cotton ear swabs, also not packaged. Either the previous person left this here and housekeeping skipped removing it, or it the hotel actively chose to provide these community-used items, both of which are unhygienic. A similarly-used cup in the bathroom, next to a used bar of soap, a
Übersetzen