"I stayed at this hotel with my family for four nights, and I can confidently say that I would not stay here again: it certainly has some positive aspects, but it also has many drawbacks.
For my next trip, I would look for a better hotel that would allow me to enjoy the Paris experience more fully.
The positive points are:
- The price, which is considerably lower than other options.
- The size of the room, which was spacious and able to accommodate a family of four in two double beds.
- The extremely close proximity to the metro station, to Parc de la Villette (where children can play), to the Science and Technology Museum, to the Philharmonie de Paris and the Théâtre de la Villette.
- The location in a neighborhood that is well served by restaurants and grocery stores.
- The quality of the mattresses.
The negative points are:
- The lack of air conditioning: they will tell you that it has only been broken for a few days, but if you check reviews from several months or years ago, you will realize that this is actually a long-standing problem and that the staff are not telling the truth, just as the room descriptions are misleading.
- The poor cleanliness of the common areas, with bottles left in the corridors for days and stained carpets.
- The poor cleanliness of the room.
- The generally poor maintenance of both the room — including a clogged toilet with water constantly trickling through it — and the common areas, where there were open panels, dents, and stains on the carpets.
- The staff’s lack of interest in making guests feel welcome (this can also be seen in their actions: for example, we were not given any information on how to access the Wi-Fi and on the first evening, we asked for a couple of extra towels, but for some inexplicable reason they disappeared during the first room cleaning the following morning. If there are four people staying in a room, you would expect to have four towels rather than two).
Most seriously, on the day of our arrival, I received an email demanding that I provide my credit card details, with the threat that my booking would be cancelled within 45 minutes of the email being sent, despite the fact that my reservation had been made through a online booking process that specifically allowed payment upon arrival.
When it is the day of your trip, you have already booked all your sightseeing activities and flights, and then in the morning you receive a message from the hotel saying that your room is no longer guaranteed, it is an extremely unpleasant experience. How can a serious hotel send a message like this when there have been months, from the time the reservation was originally made, to request any additional information beyond what was already provided in the booking forms? I have never experienced anything like this.
I would also add that:
- the toilet paper was rough and not individually sealed.
- the magnetic key cards stopped working after a short time, which meant repeatedly going back and forth to reception to have them reactivated.
- the carpet in the room smelled unpleasant, and if the windows were left closed, the smell upon returning to the room could be quite bad.
- the hotel is located in an outlying area where there are many homeless people.
- the minibar was very dirty and contained only one small bottle of water for four people, despite the fact that the temperature in the room was around 30°C.
As far as noise is concerned, the only disturbance we experienced was from doors being slammed. Our room faced the inner courtyard, so we were not bothered by noise from outside. However, since there was no air conditioning, I can imagine that guests staying in rooms facing the street may have had particularly uncomfortable and restless nights.
Breakfast is not especially varied, but it is adequate.
Overall, the hotel feels much more like a two-star hotel than a four-star one.
Personally, I would recommend spending a few hundred euros more and enjoying your visit to Paris in a way that reflects everything this romantic and beautiful capital has to offer and the memories it can leave you with, rather than allowing your holiday to be spoiled by a hotel that does not make you feel valued because, in the end, you are simply one of the many guests passing through. Choose this hotel only if you’re staying for a short period and want to spend as little as possible."
