Hotel Novotel di Zurich

We stayed at this Novotel in Zurich, the Novotel in Munich and the Novotel in Geneva. This Novotel was definitely not as good as the others. The location is fine - it's well connected to public transport (it is located in the business technology park). We had booked nearly nine months in advance and asked for two rooms near each other (we were travelling as a family). We were given two rooms on separate floors at opposite ends of the hotel. It was literally the most far apart that the rooms could be. Reception on check in said that they would change it, then kept me waiting for 45 minutes while they tried to do so. I gave up at the 45 minute mark and just took the rooms that had been initially allocated. The initial person on check in did try and be helpful and gave a good restaurant recommendation. The other person on reception really was not helpful - in the end one of his colleagues stepped in to assist as I think she could see that he was being very unhelpful. Reception was often busy with queues (the reception area is not large enough for the size of the hotel). We were clearly tourist visitors to the city, and no-one in reception advised us on check-in that there was a huge festival in the city taking place (attracts 2 million visitors to Zurich) that was affecting all public transport plus restaurant availability etc. The rooms and the pool were fine. The breakfast at this hotel was very, very average, particularly the hot food items. The breakfast compared very unfavourably to those offered by the Novotel hotels in Geneva and Munich. Check out took a long time, and there did not seem to be a place to drop keys. The staff have very casual uniforms (pants and polo shirt) which also contributes to the whole feel of the hotel seeming like a lower standard. Hopefully Novotel can look at this hotel and try and improve the standard so it is of a similar standard to its other locations. (Novotel Munich in particular was so much better!)