I had heard some stories about Viru hotel and it's profile as a place to go when your holiday's sole intention is to get drunk and prostitutes' services. However, I assumed that this was something that happened in 70s or 80s.
Had no idea how bad it would be even these days. I was travelling with a friend and her newborn baby and the reason we chose Viru was to join my friend's husband on business there. Well, it turned out that his business guest were there just for one thing - paid women. Of course, we did enjoy the good location - ithe hotel is located attached to a shopping mall and it was easy to go back to the hotel to feed the baby.
The rooms were ok, but more a 3 star experience than a four star luxury. In fact, everything was fine until the evening. We entered the lobby at 10 pm and immediately noticed the prostitutes on call. My friend's husband was waiting for us in the lobby for a minute or two, and during that time was offered sex twice. Drunk men were going upstairs with women clearly not their wives or girlfriends.
Outside the night club we saw this girl barely years old completely stoned and being approached by older men. I was very conservatively dressed but got grabbed in an elevator. It felt like every woman was assumed to be a It felt like every woman was assumed to be a prostitute. There was even a man who went totally nuts after I told him to keep his hands to himself. Quite frankly, I was afraid that he would go violent.
The whole scene was very sad and disturbing to me. And believe me, I'm young, relatively free-minded and well-travelled, but this was just depressing. Would never, ever bring children to this hotel. I was surprised that I family hotel chain like Sokos knowingly supports prostitution. I would suspect that such a big chain would have somekind of social responsibility, but was sad to find out that this was not the case. There are far more lovely hotels in lovely Tallinn for this price range.
