Air Asia’s Tune Hotel, Kota Kinabalu

I had booked Air Asia’s Tune hotel in KK way before it even opened, for nothing but the cheap rates. I actually paid RM0.02 for the room for 2 nights, RM16.80 for the administrative fees, and RM 10.49 for 12 hours credit of air cond, that ’s a total of RM27.31! I’ve never stayed in a cheaper room.

The only thing is, the hotel is not in town, but a bit far off. So, we needed to rent a car to get around.

Finally we got there, and lo and behold, the promised 1Borneo Largest Hypermall is no where near completion. The only thing operating is the Tune Hotel and lots of construction work going on. It doesn’t really bother us as we don’t intend to be staying in the room all the time.

We checked in, found really friendly staffs, and walked to the steps to our room, Room 203. The elevator wasn’t ready it seemed.

The hotel was painted the signature red, red walls and red everything. We were given a key card, which included the prepaid Air cond 12 hour credit and 24 hours credit for the Television, which is complimentary. Due to the incompleteness of the whole place, the Tv channels available are only TV1 to NTV7…

But it’s a nice white, LCD tv, so no complaints there. However, we did have to tune the TV ourselves. I was pretty impressed with the key slot in the room. It is normal in all hotels, when you put the key card in, the electricity turns on.

But this keyslot also has a digital screen to show the hours left for the Air cond and TV. Neat!

The room itself is the bare minimum, and pretty small too. It has a big queen size King Coil bed.

The bed takes up all the space, and there aren’t even side tables…though there are side lamps and a safe that doesn’t work yet.

A glass door with the huge Tunehotel logo opens to the bathroom. Mind you, this glass door is a swing type, it cannot be locked. So you can literally see people doing business in the bathroom. 😛

In front of the bathroom is a huge ceiling to floor mirror, I guess this helps to make the room ‘look’ bigger.

The bathroom is very clean and new, obviously. We probably gave it the opening ceremony. It uses the rain water shower head, which is really nice. Hot water shower is provided too.

The bathroom and toilet area is separated by a glass door cubicle so you won’t splash water all over. I like the bare minimum looking basin, they didn’t have to build a counter top for this and you can still leave your toiletries on top of it. And of course, they do provide a hair dryer, all the necessities.

Towels, soap and stuff like that is not automatically provided as guests can bring their own. However, you can actually buy them at the reception for only RM5. I think there are still things incomplete in the room, like there aren’t any places to hang your clothes etc. We noticed glass frames on the walls that are still empty, I presume they are going to put up advertising there. I think Air Asia is really really smart, they utilise everything for advertisements. Even the walls that are painted by Nippon paint is advertised like this.

I like the patterns on the feature wall. Mind you, this is not a wall paper, but it’s painted on. You can even use the wall for some portrait photography..as we did…

In the lobby, there is a Gloria Jeans Cafe and a small 7 Eleven Convenience store. We made no purchases at either of these places. There is a small seating room at the lobby too, with magazines for you to read and hang out.

We didn’t use this service since we had a car, but they do provide air port transfers from Terminal 2 to Tune Hotel for free and from Hotel to Airport at RM15. Pretty reasonable since more cab fares are RM20 plus.

Tune hotel is a really nice place to stay for fuss free travellers, and it will be a great place once 1Borneo is completed with the rest of the facilities. This looks like a new booming town for KK people. I hear they’re opening a Tune hotel in Kuching soon…way to go.

Read about KK’s Seremban Seafood Restaurant, Yu Chap, the very popular Salut Seafood Restaurant and my island hopping experience during the trip and my first day arriving in Kota Kinabalu.