Hotel Sentral Kuala Lumpur opened on May 15 2009, positioned as a mid to low priced hotel in the heart of little India – Brickfields. At the promotional rate offered by their website, we found it to be good value accommodation for adult travelers staying for short periods and would recommend it to others.
Should you need to stay close to KL Sentral station for commuting purposes, and don’t wish to splash out on an upmarket bed, Hotel Sentral’s a great alternative to staying nearby at the much more expensive Hilton and Le Meridien. Just 150metres from KL Sentral station, it can be reached on foot by walking towards the monorail which swoops around it, halting diagonally across the road.
We used the hotel for two shoulder stays in KL where we were staying one night in between connecting flights. It gave us the opportunity to land and quickly get down to a day’s shopping and sightseeing whilst still being walking distance to the Skybus stop for our early morning departures to the LCCT airport terminal. As taxis in KL have a 50% surcharge between midnight and 7am, it was a sensible move. You can walk to the station to catch the train to KLIA or to catch the Skybus to LCCT.
The hotel is set up for business guests, with a selection of budget rooms and suites, a café, roof bar and small business centre. Reflecting this, there is no swimming pool but the rooms have wifi access and buffet breakfast included in the rate. Given our early start, they even offered to pack a breakfast for us to take to the airport.
We chose to pay a little extra for a room on a higher floor as the area is bustling and can be noisy. It sits over the monorail line and there is also a mosque nearby - consequently the amplified call to prayer is audible from all floors of the hotel. We weren’t bothered as we were not at the hotel at those times, but have been disrupted by the noise at venues in other cities.
We booked directly with the hotel online, where promotional rates were on offer. The hotel has received some local press and was actually booked out the night we arrived. The rates were impressively very reasonably priced for KL, which can often be quite pricey for what is on offer.
The first room we stayed in was a spacious corner room on the 14th floor with views across to the Petronas Towers, our second room a few days later was on the top floor, significantly smaller but adequate. If you have a lot of luggage, consider requesting a corner room when you make your reservation. The hotel was very clean, the décor modern and comfortable.
Both our rooms featured a tiny ensuite which just had enough room for a basin, toilet and shower; the door doubling as also the door for the shower stall. The shower head had good pressure, towels were fluffy & clean and a selection of toiletries was provided.
The rooms also had a small desk which housed a hair dryer connected to the drawer. The room safe was of adequate size to house a small laptop and camera, and the air-conditioning was efficient. A large flat screen Samsung TV was mounted on the wall at the end of the bed, with access to ten TV stations. The small mini bar was left empty except for two bottles of complimentary water.
While the hotel is new, the room furnishings and the walls in the public areas were already showing signs of wear and tear. The queen sized bed was comfortable, but the sheets peculiarly were barely big enough to cover it. We found the staff to be friendly and accommodating but it would appear still coming to grips with their roles, with the day staff a little more efficient than the night crew, however the day staff had the benefit of a manager on hand to guide them. We also stayed at the Novotel in KL and found the staff at Sentral to be considerably more polite.
The area around the hotel - Brickfields – is KL’s Little India. It boasts affordable massage centers staffed by blind masseuses, trained at the local institute for the vision impaired, affording them a vocation rather than relying on begging.
There are convenience stores and money changers close by, with some small stores also at KL Sentral station for shopping. Also in the streets around the hotel are many Mamak eateries, serving delicious Indian breads and curries at a tiny price. We ate excellent chappatis at Sentral Chappatis across the road and dosai at the entry to the Monorail station. We found the travel agent - located across the road from the hotel and below the monorail - very helpful with his guidance of the public transport system and selection of day trips.
With the hotel being close to the Sentral station you have an abundance of public transport to choose from during your stay, making it easy to make your way around the city. There are both KLIA airport trains as well as suburban trains, the monorail, taxis and there is a bus station outside the monorail station. Guided by the local travel agent, we caught the bus to get to the sprawling Mid Valley Mall. The return trip cost 2MYR per person, the ticket is valid for a full day on any KL Rapid bus.
We would most definitely recommend Hotel Sentral. It put the much bigger and expensive Novotel City Centre hotel to shame, where the room we had was poorly serviced to the point that there were mushrooms growing in the bathroom, stained sheets and the staff were rude. If you want an efficiently run hotel, with modern conveniences, that is convenient to commuter transport and don’t mind not having the use of a swimming pool, then this could be the place for you.
