Penang Avatar Secret Garden

An elegant hotel with comfortable and clean rooms. The staff were both friendly and helpful. The location near the heart of Georgetown was excellent. And it was excellent value

I would rate this as a 3.5-star hotel. The beach by the hotel is quite small, so if you are booking based-on beach access and proximity, I would recommend a hotel either closer to Georgetown or a newer construction (as this hotel has been renovated but is in an older builing. Jazz hotel down the street may be a newer and better choice, but check the reviews first!). What can be improved at this hotel is housekeeping. When we checked in the sheets were severely stained with makeup (not a little bit, the inside/top of the sheets were pink). The bed was changed as requested, but this is an oversight a 4-star rated hotel should not have had. Also housekeeping was typically not done by 5pm or sometimes even by 7pm, when we were gone from the room all day. There was one day where we hit the service room button when we left after 9am and we were back around 7pm and the room hadn't been cleaned, and was skipped that day. Typical room cleaning in hotels is from 10am to 2 or 3pm, but not at this hotel, either the room wasn't cleaned or it was done after 5pm. Lastly, this is more of an issue with the Expedia booking and not an issue with the hotel or hotel management - watch out when booking to be sure your confirmation says "free breakfast". When we booked on Expedia it said free breakfast in red by the room description, but I didn't notice that the confirmation didn't have this noted, as a result we didn't have free breakfast at the hotel and it was 49MYR per person per day.