I spent two days here in October 2019 (likely the quiet season), overall was fairly unimpressed and felt that it was not a special hotel. Typically I try to actively avoid Ritz Carlton's due to the lack of elite benefits (I'm a Lifetime Titanium and average about 75 nights in Marriott hotels a year), however in this case my my corporate rate at this hotel seems to be about 40% of the BAR and it was the only Marriott branded property in the city so it seemed better to earn a few points. My wariness was "rewarded", paid breakfast for two would have been about 45% of my room rate for example, so we skipped it based on reading a few tripadvisor reviews (breakfast is 12,000KZN / 30USD per person).

Upgrade/Room: No upgrade, just given a standard room, which had a nice TV, good quality separate bath, but was otherwise used for sleeping in and that was about it. The TV selection was ok, a lot of channels but only really 3 in English (Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild and Discovery). The hotel had disabled changing the input on the huge / good quality Samsung TVs to prevent you casting your own movies . At least my 4pm late check-out was automatically processed through mobile check-in, and without any comment, even though the hotel is "friendly" enough to remind on every page of your booking that early/late checkouts will be charged.

Location: You're likely to be getting taxis around the city anyway (Yandex taxi now rather than Uber), and the hotel is a little way out, not near any metro. It was convenient to get out of the city (the hotel advertised nearby skiing), and we never felt it was a big issue, but it certainly isn't walking distance to any sights. As a note we decided to do a 30 minute walk back from the art museum after a large lunch, along a "river" aka drainage overflow but a taxi would have been more sensible.

Service: I think that the RC brand is meant to be all about additional service, I only felt that once, on checking-out - we were given a nice cup of apple tea and the concierge was very professional about printing out our opera tickets which included providing a plastic sleeve for the paper. However, nowhere else did it feel even up to a typical Asian Marriott standard, as a basic example in the lobby (30 floors down from reception) there always seemed to be about 5 guys working as doormen/bellboys at all times, however we still needed to open the doors ourselves. Just seemed odd. To put this in perspective I also had a welcome note to my room, that was completely printed, not even a hand-written signature (which I seem to get in most Marriott properties anyway). They didn't even email me my folio as I asked.... sigh

As such, I wouldn't necessarily return if there was another option in the Marriott chain that had opened up in the meantime. I don't think I'll be back to Almaty anytime soon anyway, so hopefully the St Regis reopens or similar (we walked past it one day in the city randomly). If I contrast this to my experience in Astana at the St Regis it couldn't have been more different, and the room rates were exactly the same. It really didn't make me think I should spend anymore time at the Ritz Carlton brand.