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Review of Le Meridien Barcelona

The other hotel where we have picked to stay in Ba...

The other hotel where we have picked to stay in Barcelona. We have split the stay so we checked in day 1, day 2 out of town and re-checked in again to the same hotel for day 3.

Location - Excellent. It's 2-3 minutes walk to Mercat la boqueria.

Room #1 Deluxe King

The room was okay, just standard hotel rooms, quite spacious I thought. The only thing that wasn't good was the toilet - the door was not functioning properly, it has some loud click every single time I open/close it. It was quite loud it is actually quite scary because I thought the door may fall anytime soon. We reported this at point of check out and reception took note of it (It was a room on the 5th floor but I forgot the number). Apparently nobody had made this remark so they haven't got enough info to fix it. Hopefully it's fixed now..

Because we were going out of town for a night and will re-check in again the next day, we requested for our luggages to be stored in the hotel and move it into the room the next day. The hotel said strictly no overnight luggage due to the bombing incident. However, I understand the need for the policy but this could be revised. I mean, your guests have stayed a night and have already prepaid for the next night, so why not allow this simple request? You can always have some device to scan the bags first just if you want to buy an insurance . I'm sure the hotel is able to check the background/history of their guest (where I am a SPG member so my history is visible to them?). I don't know, I just felt that the policy could be revised to accommodate genuine guests. We were offered (a) hotel services to move our luggage to wherever + luggage storage fee; (b) to walk to the nearest storage. Honestly very inconvenient because we are already checking in the next day... Wasted so much time here.... The only reason I picked Le Meridien again is because of the convenience but it wasn t that convenient afterall.

Room #2 Deluxe King - Upgraded to Premium Deluxe Twin

Also, because of the inconvenience and the front desk staff felt really bad for us, he moved our room from deluxe to premium deluxe as a form of apology due to the strict policies. We were happy with the room as it was newly refurbished with the exception that we were given twin beds instead of king. We did not go down to change it because it was only a night and it was just too much trouble. I was pleasantly surprised by the curler in the room - it is absolutely useful!!! I hope every hotel I go to provides this too but they don't so, this is seriously a very high plus point!!

Concierge staffs:
Bruno was very helpful with the exchange of emails for my reservations request. One thing to note about the concierge - there should always be a back up staff if one guest hogs the concierge staff for too long. I stood there for close to 10 minutes because one person sat there asking 101 questions (with maps and all) when I just wanted to ask a quick one. Twice that it happened that people were asking tonnes of questions and hogging a staff but nothing we can do except waiting and hoping for staff number 2 to appear.

Conclusion:
In comparison with W where we have stayed earlier, the rooms were certainly not as beautiful/modern nor the view was as great as W s. However, Le Meridien offers practical rooms and I got good sleep quality here, I did not have issues with noise and that is certainly WAY more important than beautiful bedroom/view. Also, the front desk staffs were a lot more professional in handling matters and I would definitely pick Le Meridien anytime over W - it is practical, professional and suitable for business. I also like the fact that they have security guards guarding the place 24/7 and they lock the main entrance after certain hours for security purposes. Again, in comparison, because W is a party place, anyone is free to walk in so security is not as good.

Other info:
They offer free Casa Batllo tickets to guests too but we did not have enough time to see so we dropped the item of getting the tickets from the concierge.