Originally Posted by Land-of-Miles

We are staying at the Etoile right now after spending yesterday at the Montparnasse. I have stayed at Montparnasse around 6 times in the last 12 months and tend to know exactly what I will get which is normally a good sized one bedroom suite with slightly tatty furniture and fairly pleasant bathrooms. The Montparnasse property has been the only Starwood which is located close enough to my Paris clients for business trips, but since I am building up Meridien stays under the 7 nights for 4 offer, I thought this would be an easy extra Meridien stay.

This is my first stay at Etoile and apart from the fresher decor I am not particularly impressed. We got a club floor room as we expected after reading this thread). What I did not expect was to find the smallest room I have ever found in a starwood property in any stay to date. Those who compared the room to a Holiday Inn are doing Holiday Inn a grave disservice. Most UK Holiday Inn rooms I have stayed in were significantly larger. The seperate loo is fine in principle however the small room size makes it seem like you are stuck in a tiny cupboard. The hotel really feels like I am staying in one of the many international Hiltons with really tiny rooms, combined with a US style lounge which eally offers very little.

The Lounge seems fine for free water or coffee but that (and breakfast) appears to be all you get. Having just sat in there until around 7.30pm there was no sign of either free wine or even the most basic of canapes. To be honest there seems to be very little point to the lounge and there isn't even any free internet (using the lounge PC's is chargeable as is using wi-fi, I opted instead to use my 3G card).

On the whole I would now have a strong preference for the Montparnasse property.