Senator Barajas in Madrid

After staying two out of six nights in the Senator Barajas Hotel, my impressions. It is close to the airport. If you travel light, you can walk within thirty minutes to terminal 1, 2 or 3 crossing the road over a food bridge. I checked in on line and got the keycard to room 539 quickly. The staff seems professional and speaks decent English, so I didn't have to use the limited Spanish I learned in school many years ago. But if you want to call reception from your room (704) nobody ever bothers to pick up the phone. The room is large and clean enough. It has a balcony (without table or chairs), a safe and a fridge with two bottles of water in it upon arrival. The bottles are not replaced with new ones after using them, but a Mercadona Supermarket is within a five minute walk. The bed is comfortable, but the pillows are very thin and soft. I travel alone and put the two on top of each other. There is daily housekeeping. The bed is made, but the floor is not vacuumed, leaving hairs and dust. The bathroom is small, but adequate with and in bath shower. The hotel is within a ten minute walking distance of a metro station giving access to line 5, fifteen stations and approximately thirty minutes to the centre of Madrid (Gran Via). There are plenty of restaurants and bars in the immediate area. The hotel has a pool outside, so to cold in October and a gym. The restaurants and bar in the hotel are overpriced. But if you walk five minutes, you pay half the price for the same food and drinks. The two main issues are the Wi-Fi and the poor insulation. There is no Wi-Fi signal in room 539. I have to use roaming and 4G/5G to connect my devices. Not a problem for a citizen from the EU with a large bundle, but very expensive if not covered by the contract in your home country. And even basic and cheap insulation like a door hinges to prevent room doors from slamming shut is missing. The walls are paper thin, so you can constantly hear other guests and the hotel is frequently visited by tour buses with alarms sounding when they back-up in parking in the evening arriving and early morning departing. A lot of groups of tourists use this hotel for one night and they are are not quiet, shouting in the corridor and slamming their doors until well after midnight and again from 6 am onwards. So, even with earplugs you will be lucky to get some sleep. Upon arrival, I requested a quiet room and I got a room facing the steet on a floor with a lot of loud touring people staying for one night and cars and buses pushing their claxon and sounding there alarms. Now, these problems are known to management and addressed in a lot of previous reviews. But if the management only replies to these reviews by apologising and doesn't follow this apology up with even taking the most basic measures, like installing cheap door hinges to prevent doors from slamming shut, these replies are useless and apologies empty. There is no need for a big renovation. With a little investment you can tackle some of the noise issues and guarantee guests a beter nights sleep. Not doing so, shows a lack of interest and leads to bad reviews. For the price paid, more thant €100 a night, guests are allowed to expect more. The price-quality ratio just isn't right. In a hotel being able to get a good nights sleep is the most important thing. A shame really, because with a little effort from the management this really has the potential to be the four star hotel they are claiming to be. For now, three stars is as far as I can go and even then I am being generous.