Grand Mark by ACADEMIA

Excellent
Traveller Type: family with young children

Good
Traveller Type: young couple
  : The location of the hotel is excellent and close to all the main attractions and the river but really quiet and peaceful at night. Good bars and restaurants nearby. The rooms are a good size, modern, really clean and well kept. Breakfast hit and miss as each member of staff serves it differently but the waffles are OK. Staff have limited English but do try using an interpreter App. I would recommend the Hop on Hop off bus tour for a good look around. If taking the hydrofoil to Peterhof don't bother with Business class as the free drinks consist of coffee, Tea or a carton of juice and the snack is one single piece of chocolate anything else you have to pay extra for. The seats at the back of the boat are like seats you would get on a train in England and are perfectly comfortable plus there are windows that open which you don't have in business class. You may get the smell of fumes a bit but not bad enough to warrant paying the extra to upgrade.
  : BAD BOOKING EXPERIENCE On arrival we were told our booking made a year prior to our stay was not in their system due to a "Booking.com" error. Eventually we were given a room on the ground floor and everything was great until Wednesday when we were told we were being moved to a sister hotel on Thursday. We thought that our last two days would be in the new hotel and we would go home from there though the staff kept saying they would get us a taxi for Friday. Annoyed by the inconvenience after our day out to Peterhof we moved to a hotel that was an hour away in a hot taxi and not really that close to anything. The room was on the 4th floor with no lift and we were woke up early in the morning by the receptionist microwaving breakfasts outside our room. We worried all of Thurs night and Fri morning that we would not get back to our original hotel for our transfer so we took it upon ourselves to try to contact the transfer company. Our reception had no English so we went to the Best Western who were really helpful and put us through to the hotel administrator. The administrator explained we would be going back to the original hotel for the last night which then made sense of the "taxi for Friday" comments. It would have made more sense for the administrator to speak to us directly rather than make the poor receptionists struggle and cause the mis-understanding. We use booking dot.com a lot and recommend you to our friends but we have been really disappointed by the services we have received on this trip. A refund of the nights stay was given to us but we don't really feel this compensates the inconvenience we were put through.

Excellent
Traveller Type: young couple

Exceptional
Traveller Type: family with young children
  : Excellent location. Close to many attraction. A cafe just next door is recommended for breakfast and lunch.
  : There were tiny black flies in our apartment. Not blood sucking, not attracted to people, but annoying like hell nevertheless. They would fly in front of the TV or laptop screen and land on it. We tried to kill them all (there were about 5 initially), but about 5 appeared the next day. We complained to the management and they promised to take of this problem.

Good
Traveller Type: family with young children

Very Good
Traveller Type: young couple

Wonderful
Traveller Type: family with young children

Wonderful
Traveller Type: family with young children
  : Excellent location and spotlessly clean room! Very friendly and helpful staff, good selection of breakfast menus.

Very Good
Traveller Type: young couple

Very Good
Traveller Type: solo traveller