It occurred to me that I can now answer my own questions, having stayed at the hotel.

First, we very much enjoyed our stay. The hotel was great; the staff were very helpful, and we were very appreciative.

We'd reserved two rooms, but they weren't able to provide adjoining rooms as we would have preferred, though they did upgrade one of the rooms to a junior suite on the north side of the building. Unfortunately, in order to get the double beds that my oldest son and I required, we ended up staying on a different floor, but since it was only for one night and we didn't expect to spend much time in the rooms, we were fine with that.

Some reviewers of this hotel have complained that it is dated, and needs to be upgraded. There is some truth in that; if I recall correctly, the number of electric outlets in the room made it difficult to plug in everything we needed to charge, and there were no available outlets close to the bed. Since I use my phone as an alarm, that was not appreciated.

It seems more than a few of the younger staff were educated at US universities, so several speak English quite well, far better than what I can do with my fading Korean, and everyone was helpful and kind to us. For example, I called the front desk to fix an Internet connectivity issue, and it happened that a manager was on my floor, so he came to my room directly and helped me with the problem.

The only complaint that I had was that the prices for food and beverages in the hotel are eye-watering, like a breakfast buffet for $34/person. As a result, we went outside of the hotel to the COEX mall or the neighborhood for everything. I think PacRim's post above is spot-on.

I'm sorry to report that the Grand Havana Cigar Divan is no longer in the hotel.


This was my room.


The view from my window.