sink

Stayed one night on 7/4. Check in at 4PM, was upgraded to a business suite (use the stay 2 get 1 free promo). The business suite was city facing low floor. The portion of the room dedicated to the office was locked-off. Nice hotel, but a category 6 (I guess it's due to pricing)?

Even though a free stay, I was charged 8.50 CHF for city tax. Not sure why.

Was offered the Platinum welcome amenity selection, 500 pts, $10 bar credit, wine, or local gift (swiss knife). Took the wine, since we will not be checking luggage on our return flight.

schriste

With your office locked-off... was there anything else about the room that made it an upgrade?

Fuocotecnico

Stayed 2 nights 17-19 of July using the Free weekend nights promotion.
Upgraded to a prestige room on check-in (for some strange reason, this hotel considers standard rooms to be "deluxe", so a prestige room is basically a standard-sized room with a better view and amenities). The hotel seems to be quite full, so even the basic upgrade was fine.
Didn't dine in the restaurants.
(+) Asked for 4pm late checkout, obtained immediately.
(-) Asked at check-in for which complimentary newspaper I'd like (chose Herald Tribune), but it wasn't delivered neither sat nor sun morning.
(--) A waitress came inside the room at 6pm without knocking on the door. Hello lady, I don't care if it's turndown service, please announce yourself BEFORE opening the door.

Room:
2nd floor, lake/pool view. Bathroom amenities were 75ml Acqua di Parma, definitely nice. Nice room also, with iphone>tv connection cable and nespresso coffee machine worth mentioning.

Bed was king sized, even if composed by two adjacent mattresses (could barely feel it, plus the bed and pillows were definitely confortable).

Nicely sized marble bathroom with bathtub.
-----

Pros: very friendly and helpful staff. Essential but elegant room, nice in-room amenities.

Cons (not really worth being categorized as such, but I'd say): not immediately close to the city center, in terms of 10 minutes on foot (even if it's a really nice lakeside walk). See other minuses above, but other than those, nothing to complain about.

Hope this can be helpful to others.
Ciao

elitetraveler

I stay 6+ times a year at PW. In addition to the fusion restaurant, they have an excellent Lebanese restaurant, and a nice outdoor restaurant on the pool deck during the summer.

The renovated rooms are very nice, and I really like the wood paneled hallways. The service is always very good, and being a regular guest they are very attentive. The only negative is the Wifi has had problems on and off. The lake views are also wonderful.

This is definitely an excellent hotel in my opinion.

FD1971

AFAIK, the International Herald Tribune is published Monday-Friday only, hence no paper can be delivered on Saturday and Sunday.

While I hate hotels that are not willing to give you a free paper on Sunday, because the sunday paper is far more expensive and some hotels are too cheap, even very good ones, I guess you cannot blame the property in this case.

Shantanu

Would anyone know if the hotel has a club lounge?

TIA

Flews

Deleted.

Shantanu

Ah....I have another question.....

Are instant awards available here generally?

sink

Not that I'm aware of.

CIT85

NO. Expensive hotels in Geneva do not have club lounges.

Shantanu

Thanks sink & CIT85 for the info. It's much appreciated!....just leaving for the flight to Geneva now!

noirpepper

any updates? I have a stay coming up at the end of the month.

Shantanu

I'm travelling again now, so will update here on Saturday. But to summarise my thoughts very briefly: good upgrades from two award rooms, good staff, very helpful, but very, very expensive for incidentals such as food. Very cold pool. Small gym. Nice-ish spa. Expensive car parking (though we worked out a cheaper way to park). Good food in the restaurants, terrible food for room service. Concierge was a little lacking in knowledge. Expensive internet....but then again, Geneva was rather expensive. Overall a very good stay.

noirpepper

thanks for the summary looking forward to your detailed report on Sat. cheers and safe travels.

Shantanu

Hi there,

Apologies for the delay....I have been travelling until now, unexpectedly.

We stayed for the weekend, two rooms, on two free earned weekend nights. Clearly, I expected the standard rooms as they were award rooms, however, on checking-in (at midnight), we were very warmly greeted by name, and given two upgrades. One to a business corner suite, the other to a deluxe room opposite.

The deluxe room was a little smaller, but still very nice. They told us that the deluxe rooms were the recently renovated rooms. The classic rooms were on the lower floors, awaiting renovation.

The business corner suite had the office part locked off, but the actual room part was very very large. It was well equipped with a huge, motorised Bang & Olufson TV screen, sofa, lots of space, separate dressing area, nespresso machine with two free capsules, etc..

Bathroom was fine, large, clean, with Acqua di Parma toiletries. We didn't take them, but the chap showing us the room after check in told us that the suit bag and umbrella in the wardrobe were complimentary, for us to take with us.

Parking was rather expensive. You can use the valet parking out front, or the underground parking. It's the same price. If you take the parking underground, they give you a ticket you can use to come and go as you please (which we took as we had the kids bits and pieces in the car). Later, we were told we would have done just as well parking on the street for free at the weekend.

The exterior of the hotel is very ugly. We also had a poor view, but the hotel faces Lake Geneva, so you should definitely ask if you can get a room with a view of the lake.

The front desk staff were brilliant. The staff at the pool were also brilliant. We were there on a lovely, hot weekend, so my 6year old son wanted to swim in the pool. Anything we asked, they did for us without hesitation.

The spa seemed a little small, as was the gym, but they had a good range of treatments, which seemed expensive by the rest of Europe's standards. The spa receptionists were a little off-putting, acting as though it was an extension of their own homes in which we were intruders.

By the time we got in and settled, the front desk told us that we wouldn't be able to find anything decent to eat, so we ordered off the room service menu. Choices were sparse as only the 24 hour menu was available. We had chicken sandwiches (which arrived as chicken burgers), the fillet of which was tough enough to use as a hockey puck; my young son had a pizza (they brought the wrong one). For 4 adults and one child to eat a dish each, I think it came to about CHF 200...so rather expensive. The drinks from the minibar were about CHF12 each. The central station is not far away, and you can pick up drinks quite cheap there at the 24 hour grocery store there.

Again, I cannot remember, but I think breakfast worked out to be about $45 each, so we ate out instead, but found that Geneva is rather expensive, and based upon outside prices, the hotel was not so bad.

We asked the concierge a number of questions, such as, where can we rent a motor cruiser for the lake; he told us you can only hire a peddle or rowing boat. We took a little walk and found a place where we were able to get a choice of motor cruisers and yachts. With several things, we asked the concierge to only receive a poor, uninformed reply, which we were able to find a better answer to ourselves, either from walking around, or from the internet.

The Platinum gift was a small Swiss army knife, which I didn't take, and the choice of bottle of wine came highly recommended from the front desk manager. I took the points.

We did have one problem. When we arrived, there was a huge amount of what looked like mildue, or mould, on the duvet cover. It was 2am by the time we were going to go to bed, so, we took the duvet off and slept with the sheet instead. The next day we asked for the duvet cover to be changed. They didn't.

When we later called down to speak to the Housekeeping manager (my wife and I are fluent in French, so there was no miscommunication), we told her that we had asked for the duvet to be changed, yet it hadn't been. She told us that she would check with her staff and then let us know if it were to be changed if she found we were telling the truth! What that was about was beyond us! We just told her that that was unacceptable, and that it needed to be changed immediately, as requested that morning.

No quibbles with our requested 4pm check-out (which turned out to be 5pm by the time we left).

What I really liked about the property though were the staff. Despite not being overly impressed by either the housekeeping manager or the receptionists at the spa, every other member of staff was so pleasant, always had a smile on their faces, and always greeted us very warmly, whether it was a staff member at the bar, the desk, the pool, or a restaurant......

.....speaking of which, the restaurant food was excellent. We only tried one restaurant, but the food, though expensive, was brilliant.

We had a good stay overall, though the hotel is a bit of a carbuncle, and the words taste, understated and elegant are lost on this monstrosity, but for an award stay, it was great. However, that being said, I don't know if I would have been happy to have paid CHF400 per room for a paid stay (that was the prevailing rate for the weekend we stayed).