Grand Hotel Excelsior

Ideally situated with a great pool and facilities. No crowding or queues with all the staff attentive and efficient. Just a few minutes walk into Valletta with fantastic bars and restaurants. All very reasonably priced, roughly half of London prices and cheaper than most British towns. Coupled with a safe polite atmosphere makes it fantastic. The hotel breakfast offered a selection of every food possible!! The room was a good size and cleaned twice daily, A/C was brilliant. Courtesy bus from the hotel to town even though it was only 10 mins walk, this ran all day. Can’t fault anything, a proper 5star hotel

Great food , friendly and helpful staff. Really recommend it

Highly recommend this hotel if you are looking for high end great location with a huge pool and exquisite waterfront view. Front desk reception was wonderful, Tiki bar restaurant has outstanding food for lunch including scrumptious fish of the day. There were a few small things that would have made this stay perfect perfection, which I would expect from a high-end hotel. The rooms are a bit dated, but had a nice balcony view, the major issue was a complete lack of outlets anywhere convenient. Even one outlet next to the bed would be helpful or a charging station of some sort otherwise no point catering to business travelers. The whirlpool inside the beautiful indoor pool area was broken, but there was no signage. Finally, the staff at poolside were not very attentive. You had to actively shout (politely of course) to get anyone’s attention, at one point I had to ask three different people just to get a menu. Finally, the breakfast that was included in our room while very large was just OK. The food was a bit bland and the omelette station always had a long line. Coffee was good! Amd view is awesome. If you are looking for a hotel where you can walk to everything, keep in mind that it’s not for someone with mobility issues. There’s about 80 steps to get to the top of the hotel road, and after that it’s uphill to get into Central Valletta. We just ended up ubering there and walking back.

Beautiful hotel, Staff were friendly and welcoming from the moment we arrived. The décor of the hotel was excellent. The room was spacious and had character with a bath as well as a shower. The dining area was very well managed and the staff were attentive.

We chose the hotel simply because of the large pool and it's location on the edge of town and those are its only strengths. This hotel is large and desperately in need of renovation. It looks and feels like a hotel from the 1980s. It undoubtedly is 5-star because of its facilities, but it isn't 5-star in terms of the rooms, the food or the service. The staff do try their best, but they are understaffed and not helped by the systems they operate under. When we checked in having arrived on an early morning flight, we had to queue for over twenty minutes before we could even speak to a receptionist. They were very stressed as they said they had a large group checking out. We knew that we were earlier than the official check in time, so they were unable to properly check us in. They said that they would phone me when the room was available. After the official check in time I went back to reception and asked if our room was available. They said that it was. They took a 150 Euro deposit for any expenditure at the hotel, which is unusual, though I had heard earlier one member of staff saying to the receptionist that a guest had left without paying. When we went to the room, we found it was twin beds, while we had specifically requested a double bed. The receptionist said that this was because booking.com hadn't passed that onto them. We requested a room with a double bed and they said that they were full, but they could make the bed up as a double. What they meant by that, as we found out was that all they did was push the two beds next to each other, not make it up a double bed. The room was incredibly tired and outdated. Several of the sockets pre-date the modern socket (the UK-style socket) that Malta uses. For which they offer an adaptor. There aren't enough guest usable sockets. The water pressure in the shower was good. There is free wifi available throughout the property. There was a televsion in the room, but as it wasn't connected to either an aerial or a satellite provider, it was there purely for show. They make it clear that the water is not drinkable in the hotel and provide you with two small bottles of water per day. If you want additional water bottles the charge is 6 Euros. Given that the water is drinkable they should be providing guests with unlimited filtered water or be charging a much lower rate. There are a range of bars and dining options on offer. The Tiki restaurant by the sea provides a fairly average range of food. All bars and restaurants operate on a card only or charge to room basis. The breakfast is in keeping with how it must have been when the hotel opened and probably satisfies the customers that they are attracting. The orange juice is really squash, there is no greek yoghurt or granola. Expresso coffee is an extra charge and generally the quality of the product is poor. The rooms are kept clean and the house keeping staff are friendly. There are adequate sunbeds around the pool and no bed-bagging was seen. There is the opportunity to swim in the sea from the hotel in a designated swimming area, which is good. It is a fifteen minute walk into the centre of Valletta, which is perfectly acceptable and they do offer a shuttle service.