Hilton Paris Opera

Not impressed at all: we book a suite and we had a few very annoying issues within a few hours.

First, no AC in April and it is 25C in the room. They tell you the system is in winter mode so no AC, you can only open the windows and have a fan. The fan is pretty much useless and sleeping with the windows open is really not an option because of the street noise and windows cannot stay open when it rains. Only option: stay up very late until things cool off and it is okay to close the windows and keep the temperature under 22.5C (at 1am). Other problem created by requiring us to keep the windows open: the room becomes humid. Humid and hot are not what I would expect for a luxury room.

Then, the first time we tried to shower, we had no water pressure and the plumbing was making a drilling noise, it was impossible to take a shower. We tried again one hour later and all was fine. Just plain weird since when it worked I just turned the water on, I did not touch anything else.
The following days, we did have some decent water pressure, did not experience banging noises but the water does not stay at constant temperature, fluctuating from warm to boiling hot without touching anything.

Another example of an issue: we call room service for a request, the only thing the person who picked up our call was a single word repeated a few times: “no”. I go downstairs to talk to one of the few people at the front desk who actually did a great work for us since we arrived. She quickly worked with housekeeping, our request was addressed within 10 minutes. So a few staff members are great (our favorite front desk person was in training so not even a matter of experience at the hotel), housekeeping is great, many other guests-facing employees are just awful. And it is not a language barrier problem, French is my first language.

The employees working as concierge are excellent, we used their service to find and book restaurants. Housekeeping is excellent.

The suite is quiet and once the door closed it really works as two separate rooms, meaning excellent noise insulation.

The building of the hotel is exceptional.

All-in-all for the price range, many other options are available. The experience has nothing even remotely related to luxury, the rooms pretend to be but are not; too many staff members are just not on par. We will go somewhere else in the future.

I am sick and tired of Hilton saying the situation is indeed unacceptable but basically doing nothing about it. I guess I will stay away from Hilton from now on.