Let me report on another very pleasant stay. Much of the praise of course goes to what is and has long been a nice hotel, but really, I'm delighted with the recent improvements to the IHG program -- Diamond benefits, lounge pass, suite upgrade certs. In fact, I'm going to say that as Diamond with Lounge Pass, my experience here is better than it was when I was RA 10-15 years ago.

I sent an iMessage to IHG a couple weeks prior to our stay to apply a suite certificate. I've done very well on upgrades at IC Le Grand on my recent stays (junior suites or large rooms), but since I have plenty of certs laying around, figured I might use one here for my SO's birthday weekend. It took only a few minutes to confirm a balcony junior suite (which I picked among the three junior suite types offered). When we arrived, there was a huge line at the front desk, so we went up to the club lounge to check in. A good chunk of my travels are in Asia, and it feels as though more often than not, one is directed to the club lounge for check-in anyway. Not sure if it's considered to be a faux-pas here; at minimum, it doesn't seem to be a standard thing, even though the very personable lounge manager greeted us with a smile and told us he'd be happy to check us in. He typed a fair bit and found us what may be the favorite junior suite we've had at this hotel, 5320 -- consisting of a living area, bedroom, bathroom, with a total of 4 balconies offering pleasant rooftop views (although not of the Eiffel tower). Once again, there was a quirk with bathroom amenities. The small sink in the toilet had two bottles of hand soap and one hand lotion. The main bathroom had hand lotion and body lotion, plus shampoo and conditioner in the shower stall. I moved one of the hand soaps to the main bathroom and requested a body wash, first by leaving a note for the housekeeper, then by calling, but ultimately without success. We had the exact same problem last time. Now, I have seen Balmain body wash at other hotels, so this seems an IC Paris-specific shortage.

The welcome amenity was delivered promptly (fruit, cookies, water), but this time it was a one time thing, while during our last stays, we inexplicably were on some daily refill schedule. On the topic of gifts, we were also given a drink voucher for the bar, which we used for a round of drinks with friends; shockingly, when I went to settle the bill, the bartender told me that they'd already closed out our bill with the voucher (1 beer, 2 cocktails, one coupe of champagne). Exceedingly generous!

Restaurant breakfast at CdlP remains nice, but there have been noticeable downgrades over the past couple years -- there used to me a much stronger selection of smoked/cured meats and fish (I remember smoked tuna and swordfish, now it's just salmon). There are a handful of Asian items, which are uniformly boring and not goood (noodles, baos, miso), and the (steamed, hot) saumon japonais was gone four days in a row by the time we arrived around 9am and never refilled by the time we left around 10am. I don't want to be too critical here; CdlP is a pleasant space and the kitchen delivers the basics, but it's certainly not a standout breakfast.

Drink offerings at the club lounge have declined a bit -- Grey Goose, Belvedere and the like have been replaced by Absolut. Not a huge problem even for hard-core alcoholics, because the lounge still serves champagne (Castelnau) all day, which seems unusually generous unless one trains ones liver at the likes of Regent PQC. Afternoon tea comes out at 2:30pm, with a strong selection of bakery items (millefeuille, tarts, etc) and some rather boring sandwiches. The only daily variation during our stay seemed to be that on the poulet sandwiches, the poulet was forgotten once. The afternoon tea stuff remains out when the evening happy hour begins at 5pm. That happy hour again lacks variation. Every night, there's the same soup, small pizza pastries (tomato and pesto), tempura shrimp, salmon sandwiches, club sandwiches, one vegetarian sandwich. Usually, hot items were refilled when they ran out, or the initial offering replaced by something else (fish sticks, samosas), but one night, the shrimp was gone by 6:30pm and no refils brought. As for cold stuff, oysters are no longer on offer, but the boring club sandwiches were sometimes supplemented by hefty chunks of pate, a plate of smoked salmon or mini toasts with foie gras, and one time, a plate with 8 grotesquely oversized chunks of foie gras (probably around 50 grams each) came out.

The last two paragraphs probably sound rather negative, so I must stress that I merely report these details because circumstances caused us to spend an unusual amount of time at the lounge. Overall, we were delighted with our stay. IC Le Grand is an excellent option in Paris with great treatment of Diamond/LP, and stellar redemption value on points.