Introduction
Note : I have added a few pictures from a previous stay, to make a more complete review.This new stay has indeed badly begun and I had to deal with a badly trained front desk staff (again) before management took the problem in charge and then it turned excellent. In one year of Accor stays, it is the 4th time that I have to speak to management to resolve issues, and I have to say it's becoming a bit tiresome...This stay has been another...interesting one in term of Platinum experience. FTers who have read my other hotel reviews in this forum know that when I say that, it means that I had problems ;-) .This hotel is well located, Av del littoral, in the Barcelonetta area, 100m from the beach with plenty of choice for food and is walking distance from the historic town. The hotel is very modern and has 2 pools (one rooftop and one on the ground floor).This was my I think my 3rd or 4th stay in this hotel and always had very good experiences. Platinum treatment has alwys been good there. Check In So not a lot of hopes when arriving at the hotel quite late (23:00 pm) and fears confirmed when I saw the huge restaurant on the ground floor full of people ! Despite I did OLCI 2 days before, I was asked for my passport at check-in...(OLCI is really totally useless at Accor hotels in 95% of cases). Nothing was said about upgrade (and I didn't bother to ask). Drink voucher was given.It was a 2 night-stay. I had booked a classic room (the lowest category). Before arriving at the hotel, I checked as usual what were the availabilities and only classic rooms were shown available :-( Room
I was already enjoying a lot my new room when somebody knocked at the door. It was an employee bringing me a bottle of good sparkling wine with a nice note from the front desk.
The bathroom was very large as you can see on the pictures.
The way to the bedroom with a very comfy bed
My stuff was rapidly moved to the new beautiful room. The living room had a desk, a sofa, a modern armchair, nespresso machine, flat-screen TV and a small lavatory. The front desk manager has been very apologetic for the situation. She told me that the hotel capacity is currently reduced as they have 2 floors under renovation. She was truly sorry for the problems encountered and the handling of the problem. She confirmed that several higher category rooms were available and gave me the choice between a superior or deluxe room (I forgot which one it was) and a junior suite. I visited both before making my choice and, of course, took the suite :-))10 min later, about to go out for the day, I asked to speak to a manager (it was another person at front desk) and I was told that there was no manager present until monday (we were saturday). Whaaat ?? No management present during 2 days in a big hotel like this one ??? She finally told me that the front desk manager would be present in the afternoon. So I left for the day and came back around 5 pm and asked to speak to this person.Not happy at all of this 1st night with bad sleep (poor soundproofing in an hotel of this category is not acceptable IMO), after breakfast, I asked to change room. Of course, during breakfast, I checked the availabilities for the 2nd night and almost all room categories were available. And then began the too frequent circus : sorry Sir, only classic rooms are available (and they are all located facing the main road, so it wouldn't have changed anything to take another classic room). I want to precise that it was the same person who checked-me in the night before and he's not a new employee (I remember him from previous stays), so we cannot blame here inexperience. So I told him that there was availability on their website. Again : no, not possible, you may have ssen availability on 3rd party booking website. No, it's on Accor site. I made in front of him a dummy booking on the Accor app on my telephone and showed him all room categories available, but despite the proof in front of him, he was telling me that it was wrong. I was literally boiling inside...The room given was indeed the one I booked (classic room) and nothing wrong with it as they are really nice and large (30 m2). I was tired and went to bed rapidly. But unfortunately, I slept very badly because the room was facing the main road (Av del littoral) and this road has quite a heavy traffic and the soundproofing of the building is pretty poor. So there was constantly a significan level of noise and I didn't have earplugs with me. I never faced this situation during my previous stays because I always had rooms either facing the pool or the quieter perpendicular street going to the beach. Swimming pools
View from the rooftop pool:
The rooftop one:
When the weather is warm enough, there is an outside seating area for the restaurant:
Dining
The bar, where I used my drink voucher for a glass of Sangria:This restaurant serves also lunch and dinner.The breakfast buffet is superb. Lot of choice between hold and cold items, including of course all the usual Spanish selection of cold cuts and cheese. One of my favourite breakfats buffet in all hotels I have stayed in. Location Metro station at 100m : Ciutadella villa olimpica (line 4)10 Av del littoral, in the Barcelonetta area, 100m from the beach. Overall A very good hotel, which usually gives very good Platinum treatments. This time, after my 1st night and how badly they handled the case, I was thinking I would never come back. But seeing how the front desk manager handled it, I consider it as an incident and will definitely come back as I really like this hotel. But it's really a pity that we have to call on management. As said in introduction, this is happening way too often.