Originally Posted by ftrichard

I'll answer my own question as I'm at the Westin now. For the first time I've not got a suite. Previously I've had an actual suite in the hotel once and one of the adjoining serviced apartments any number of times. This time I've got an executive room on the 32nd floor. I don't care because there's just me and I'm here for a leisure trip. The answer is clear in the lounge in the evening. The hotel is packed with elites and on Monday night I arrived at about 6pm and there wasn't a free table in the large lounge. Really, anyone who knows this hotel will know that the lounge is big with a rough estimate of 40 tables spread over a space the spans the entire front of the hotel. Seems the Great Plague has made it easy to be an elite in Malaysia too.

No matter, I'm happy to report the lounge offering is up to scratch. I stayed once at the JW next door and only once because of its poor lounge offering. While it's not up to the standard of the Le Meridien at its peak, neither is Le Meridien by recent reports so I'm happy to report that the lounge service at the Westin is very good. Table service for booze including branded spirits, a variety of wine (no sparkling), and beer on tap including Guinness by the looks of it. The food includes a noodle station plus an additional chef station making a Western dish to order, a main course (usually a Malaysian curry or similar), cheeses, soup, salad leaves and accompaniments, and 3-4 made salads that took some thought and effort to put together as well as about 6-8 deserts. Definitely enough for a meal and clearly intended to be so. Service from 5.30-8,30pm.

Given the increase in prices in Malaysia since the last time I was here (summer 2019) the three hours of booze were welcome (the bill for 2 caipirinhas at La Boca in Pavilion came to MYR100. I remember when it was about MYR36 each). Staff in the lounge were plentiful and speedy at bringing and topping up drinks. I could have gone to the main buffet for breakfast but the lounge had everything I wanted including an egg station so I preferred the environment having experienced a horror at the buffet downstairs once (a child fingering food and sticking the fingers in its mouth without being stopped by its parents) that I haven't got over.

The Westin doesn't get much love here and I used to concede that LeM's lounge was vastly superior to anything else in KL but if that's now deteriorated then I don't see the advantage. I'll continue to stay at the Westin.