PRISTINA, Kosovo — The Grand Hotel in the Kosovar capital of Pristina is regularly reviled in internet reviews. Here’s a sample: “disgusting,” “a ruin” and “an absolute horror. Probably the worst I have ever been at.”

But the managers seem unfazed by the online abuse. They do not take web bookings and barely offer access to the internet; their hotel has no email account.

A byword for modern opulence when this part of the Balkans was still part of the now defunct Yugoslavia, the state-owned Grand has gone into such a steep decline that even Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci, usually an eager booster of everything his country has to offer, struggles to find anything nice to say about it.