The Parklane, Jakarta

The Parklane Jakarta is an older hotel that delivers comfortable adequate accommodation without clever marketing.

Located in a quieter part of the Kuningan area along Jalan Casablanca, its location brings a couple of conveniences. Firstly, the hotel is next to a huge mall, Kota Kasablanca. Inside, there is a hypermart (Carrefour), H&M, Marks and Spencer, Celebrity Fitness (a huge gym chain across Southeast Asia) and many other shops and restaurants. There is also a laundry/ dry-cleaning shop (Londre) in the basement. However, for very affordable coin-operated laundry (IDR40,000 for 5 kg), you might want to go to the basement of Carrefour in Mall Ambassador, just 10 mins by taxi away. Besides being located right next to a mall, the hotel is also located right where a flyover “comes down” and before the next flyover starts. Thanks to the flyover, you can zoom to and from Jl Kh Mas Mansyur in a taxi in 5 mins and for very little money.

Decorated in a soothing pale grey and white palette, the rooms are older but adequate. As with Jakarta hotels, there are many, many channels on the television. The great thing about The Parklane Jakarta is that they provide washing powder in the room which is great if you want to do some washing. If you get a room facing nearby office buildings, it is quite sexy to sleep at night with the curtains open, against a backdrop of the twinkling lights of the skyscraper and stars in the sky.

If you stay in a Premier room located on the 17th floor, one of the benefits is access to the executive lounge on the 16th floor. The lounge provides all day soft drinks and coffee and tea. In the evenings, you can get evening cocktails in the lounge. The evenings cocktails are what I like most about The Parklane. They are arguably the best I have ever seen. The evening cocktail buffet consists of a small selection of cold cuts, cheeses, fruit, cakes and dessert. The quality of these food is decent, not exactly outstanding. The strength of the buffet (and the reason I like it so much) lies in the 4 hot dishes of the buffet. Every evening, they serve 2 meat dishes, 1 starch dish and 1 vegetable dish. The dishes are all quite delicious. The 4 hot dishes combine to provide a very filling and pretty balanced meal. Jakarta is a business town; most people travel here for business. After a long day of meetings and especially dealing with the tiresome traffic jams, people are tired. They just want a delicious, balanced meal and get it over quickly. They don’t want a long sit-down dinner in the restaurant downstairs. The cocktail buffet here answers this need squarely. In addition, the hotel is considerate enough to change the menu every day (thank God!). Because the 4 hot dishes answer an important need of guests and provide a great value to them, just based on this service alone, the hotel scores high marks in my books and I would highly recommend it.