Hotel Chellah Ksar Chellah, Tangiers

This was sold as a 3 star hotel and certainly has the amenities to make it a 3 star - swimming pool, bar, restaurant, nice lounge area etc. The door staff and room cleaning staff are very pleasant too. But for us that was as good as it got. We were travelling as a family with two children - one under 3yrs old. The reception service was abysmal - we booked our rooms 6 weeks in advance and paid and confirmed our rooms online. Our plane was delayed by a few hours so instead of arriving at 1am we arrived at 9am at the hotel - totally exhausted from the plane delay etc. But guess what? They had no rooms available - myself and my arabic speaking local host told them clearly we had two rooms booked from the previous night - but no rooms were forthcoming - come back at 12noon we were told!! Luckily my Moroccan host didnt live too far away so she took us home for breakfast and we came back at 1pm. Still no rooms available! We were eventually shown our rooms at 2pm - but they were smelly and dirty and had not been cleaned from the previous occupants! We eventually took some rooms at 3pm - not very good rooms but we were desperate by now and our children were extremely exhausted / frustrated etc - so we just took them. We then had to wait whilst they were cleaned and the beds made up - this was done by 3:30pm. I then decided to shower - but guess what? No water at all in the sink or bath!! Water eventually available around 6pm! We had booked the Chellah over the Rembrandt hotel as the Chellah was listed as having AC - but neither our rooms nor the ones we saw earlier had AC! As we settled down for the nigh we discovered more wonders of Chellah. The rooms dont have curtains but have wooden shutters outside the windows. In one room the shutter was incredibly stiff and required considerable muscle power to lower them - this might have been related to the birds nest inside the shutter mechanism - we had birds chirping all night long! In the other room the shutter would not close completely - there was an 8in gap at the bottom - perfect for light to stream in after sunrise. Breakfast didnt seem too bad on the first morning - apart from the queues for Coffee and tea. But the remaining days breakfast was not as pleasant - we never got a clean table - even if we asked all they did was wisk away the dirty plates and cutlery. Any spilt drinks or crumbs etc remained - was not pleasant having to eat on a table with soaked and dirty table cloth. We had to hunt for our own cutlery and napkins from other tables! There were other problems with our rooms - one of the bathroom door handles did not operate properly and became stuck - luckily no one was inside the bath at the time. Eventually a cleaner showed us how to unlock it using a clothes hanger! The lighting in the rooms was wacky too - one room the bedside lamp was blindingly bright - in the other room the main room light was so dim you could not read a book! The only redeeming aspects of this hotel was that my children loved the pool and it was nice for us adults to sit outside near the pool after breakfast and relax a bit. Perhaps we got the two worst rooms in the hotel - but I doubt it - the other two rooms we were shown were just as poor - even a so called 'luxury' suite we were shown (50Euros etc a night to upgrade) had an electrical wall socket hanging loose with all the wiring exposed! Definitely would not stay at the Chellah hotel.