stc

So, we just stayed at the Prince de Galles 96000 points for 5 nights in a suite.

I was not all that impressed.

Yes, the location is great, but:

I've had better suites in Sheratons and Hilton in the USA not be mention Plaza, Biltmore, Westin Madrid, London Conrad, and so on.

The bed was too soft. The pillows were dead. The room was too hot. Yes, Paris is going thru a heat waive, but I dread to think what this place would be like in the summer. There was a second bathroom and shower, but they didn't bother putting soap or shampoo in there.

The door lock had an interesting problem; if you opened it from the inside and didn't make sure that the deadbolt was totally unlocked, it would not unlock from the outside.

38-40 euros each for a marginal buffet breakfast??? We wound up spending 3750 points (think $75) for buffet breakfast for two each day. The buffet at the Westin Mardrid at 25 euros or so was much much much nicer.

We we arrived at 2:30 our room was not ready yet. As it turns out it wasn't ready until about 4:30. The excuse was that it was very dirty from the last guest. I think it more likely the maid was working at a typical French pace. We wound up waiting in the Bar. 17 euros for 2 diet cokes? Give me a break. First they should have been free since the room wasn't ready (skip the champaigne in the room, picking up our bar tab we we could actually use it would have been a nicer gesture). And second, 17 euros???

They actually wanted 40 euros or so for a nip (50 ml) of Cognac in the mini-bar. I'm not sure if that or the coke was a better markup for the hotel.

Paris is *NOT* supposed to be more expensive than New York, at least not that much more expensive!

At about 6 PM on the last night of our stay both TVs started blaring loudly that we had a message. The message was that the front desk wanted to know what time we were checking out the next day. IMHO, the correct way to handle this was to assume that people were checking out by the posted checkout time or maybe turn on the message light on the phone. What if we were sleeping?

And finally, after asking the concierage to get us a taxi in the morning that would take charge cards to go back to CDG and them making a BFD over which charge card we wanted to use (MasterCard) and them asking if we had a taxi reserved in the morning, when we got to CDG we found out that the taxi didn't take chargecards. Fortunately, we had enough money. But now I have to stop at the ATM and get more money (and pay another ATM fee) for AMS.

I can't wait to see if I get a survey in the (e-)mail. This is one stay that certainly feel short of expetactions, and would make me less likely to stay at a SPG / Luxury Collection Property in the future.

And I would *never* pay the 1500 Euro Rack Rate for that hotel. In fact given how bad my wife's back is from the bed, I'd probably prefer to pay money for the Four Seasons next door than get the Prince de Galles for free!