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Added by Jopie, at 17 April 2011
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7 Reviews
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04 February 2018
The owner is a very kind woman. Her staff too. And even the restaurant is nice. But the hotel has received numerous complaints about mosquitoes
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17 May 2017
Very nice hotel with comfortable rooms
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21 November 2015
Reported slow service
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11 June 2015
Just ok.which means great for Kinshasa.
If you are sleeping in the daytime with the deadbolt locked, the cleaner will get the manager and they will open your door. Where did they think I went? I had no key for the deadboltif the bolt was thrown I must be inside the room.response / report this review -
27 February 2014
Not a place to stay for a Foreigner. We were robed whilst we slept at 02h30. A secondary key was used to gain access to our rooms and valuables were removed.
I woke up with a man searching my handbag. Management did not care and did not offer assistance. No police were called when we requested, but then if a key removed from reception was used - it certainly was a staff member. Inside job ?
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25 November 2013
Meeting place and internet food nice
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24 April 2011
Oh the Venus! An enduring legacy, a time-capsule of early-Mobutu Zaire, I have traveled over the past two years about four times to for work, wherein each time I have stayed at the celestial Venus Hotel.
I hope you detected the sarcasm above. The hotel is a dump.
Granted, this is Kinshasa so one needs to adjust his expectations accordingly, but for the relative sky-high expense of the place (avg USD$200 per night), the hotel doesn't appear to have invested a dime of this money into improvements. Indeed, there have been few if any meaningful updates since circa 1980. Many basic functions of the hotel just don't often work (the lights, television, sometimes even the toilet). The so-called "réseau wi-fi" is worthless and what's that smell in the shower -- why, one of the "features" of the Venus is that during Kinshasa's frequent water-outages, they pump water from the greenish murky "swimming" pool directly into your room.
The icing on the cake is the staff. They just doesn't seem to care. Although usually not rising to the level of sheer rudeness, they are un-responsive and partly bothered by your presence. We all have worked with people who have mentally checked out of whatever job we were in, but the Venus staff and management suffers from a veritable pandemic of professional indifference.
A tip -- it's best to pretend that you don't speak any French during the breakfast buffet as one particular person likes to yell at people for taking more than one small bottle of water. Act clueless and take as many as you want -- they won't stop you.
On the plus side though, the aforementioned breakfast buffet is surprisingly OK, and for some reason which I cannot explain, I actually seem to sleep well in this hotel. Thusly, I am moved me to charitably give the joint 2-stars.
Another tip - bring along at least one set of pajamas and comfortable socks to sleep in, as a few times I have gotten beds with invisible prickly things between the sheets. Also, as is protocol in the DRC, do not leave anything in the safe or in a well-secured suitcase.
In sum, it's better than many of Kinshasa's positively nightmarish hotels, but one should expect a lot more for the price.response / report this review
