Toyoko INN Marseille Saint Charles

I booked a room at the Tokyo Inn Marseille for the Olympics, and was thoroughly disappointed. I’ve never had to leave a hotel right after checking in, but this was a first.

To start, the 3 PM check-in time felt completely arbitrary and frustrating. They did offer luggage storage, but when I inquired about an earlier check-in, I was met with a flat “check-in is at 3 PM.” I attempted again to check in at 2:40 and was told not until 3 PM. No effort to check the computer, no checking with maintenance—just a rigid policy that felt dismissive.

When I finally got to the room, I was shocked by how tiny it was. It felt like I had booked a room on an airplane. The bed was even worse—small and horribly uncomfortable. Despite being listed as a queen size, it looked more like an American full size. The foot of the bed was also significantly higher up than the head. When I laid down, it was the final straw; the mattress felt like a rock.

The bathroom was equally disappointing. It was cramped, with a cheap plastic floor that felt unsafe, especially when stepping out of the shower. There was even an air pocket in the floor that made it bounce, adding to the overall discomfort.

To top it all off, the neighborhood was less than ideal. I didn’t feel safe walking around, and there were no decent places nearby to eat or relax. I can’t emphasize enough how much I recommend avoiding this location entirely.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this hotel to anyone.

Pros:
Location is good.
The room is not that big but not small and functional.
The facilities and amenities in the room are great!
The AC works so well.
The bathroom with bathtub is great!
Toilet bowl with Japanese style is very great.
Breakfast is limited (but ok)
Parking at the hotel is great! (10€/night)

Cons:
We stayed for 3 nights, we had all 3 nights terrible sleep. The room itself is sound proof from the outside noise (window) but it doesn’t proof any noise from the corridor or people who stayed in the same floor with you.

First night- we heard the door beeping from the opposite room in the evening. They didn’t shut their door properly (on purpose). We needed to go out and pulled their door shut to stop the beeping. Then, we looked through the cat eye on the door and saw that the man inside the room opened his door to see who shut his door! STRANGE!!!!!!!! The next morning, we went to tell the reception and hoped that they would inform that guest to properly shut the door.

Second night- around 1.45 - 2 am we heard loud noise from people who stayed the same floor with us yelling and shouting at each other. Slammed the doors multiple times, kids were screaming and crying and the worst was one of them knocked our door and tried to opened our door! So, the next morning we went to inform the receptionist and the only thing they did was saying sorry but they insisted they couldn’t do anything about it.

Third night- around 1.30-2.00 am the opposite room didn’t shut the door and let it beeped again. We called to reception to let them know, it took them almost 10 mins to stop the beeping. We were fully awake every night around the same time. So the next morning when we checked out, we wanted to talk to the manager but only got to talk to one of the staff. And what they did was apologize for our disturbing. But they didn’t do anything more than that.

We were sooooo tired from terrible sleep.
We spent 3 nights with the worst experience ever!

I was working in the hotels for so long, if this happened in the hotels that i was working with, we would have offered some compensations or a free night stay voucher for the next stay, or even try to find out which rooms that made noises and disturbed everyone else in order to stop it to happen again.

Hearing that they didn’t do anything and not even wanted to do anything was the worst experience ever!