If you're using points, stay at Hotel Arts, but if you decide want to pay, stay somewhere else. The Ren at the airport is out because of the distance. You'd either need to take a taxi or bus + commuter rail combo to get into the city.

Hotel Arts is somewhat distant from Les Rambles, but at least it's on the water. There are numerous nightclubs, fast food - Pans and Company , and restaurant options if you go outside and turn left from the canopy. There are more restaurants to the right along the water all the way to the Columbus statue. The only restaurant where I ate on site was Arola, and I only ate there because I had a 100 € meal voucher. If you go along the water, you can get an equivalent meal for 1/3 the price with the same quality; you just lose the ambiance and trendiness of Arola.

As others have said, the area around there does get lively during the summer. If that doesn't bother you, stay there. Personally, I don't think I'll ever stay there again on a paid stay. I recently went there with my father, and we had requested an upgrade that was supposedly available as part of our rate. At check-in, they said a room upgrade wasn't available, which was fine, but that they put us in an "excellent" room on one of the lowest floors of the hotel.

I'm ok with a room upgrade being unavailable, but don't try to handwave your way through it and try to claim it's an "excellent" room. When we got up to the room, it hadn't been cleaned. I have mistakenly been given a dirty room before, and it usually doesn't bother me much, but this is a place where I was shelling out 300 € per night. You expect them to get it right the first time! We moseyed back down to the check in, and, once we were able to get the attention of someone after a few minutes, we got keys to room number two. We went back up, opened the door, and to our dismay found only one bed.

At this point, I was getting a little irritated after an early flight from Madrid and just wanting a bed to rest. I went down to the desk a third time, and only this time were they extremely apologetic. They comped a drink from the bar while I waited about 15 minutes. Someone finally came over and escorted me up to a room on the 29th or 30th floor. I guess you could say we took the backdoor approach to the room upgrade.

During the summer, you see a lot of hospitality interns from northern European countries working at the hotel. I think this adds to the confusion and mistakes. Most aren't that familiar with the city, so they can't make suggestions or give directions to places in town. One of them didn't even know where the gym was in the hotel. In summary, this experience was unbecoming of the level of service I expect at a Ritz-Carlton. I've had more competent service from an Ibis.

Overall, it's a nice hotel and the staff are friendly, but the ordeal I went through has left me with a lasting bad impression about the hotel.