Hotel Riviera Elysees

We stayed at the Riviera Elysees hotel for 5 nights recently and while I rarely write reviews, this stay warranted warning people about what to expect. For a bit of perspective, the stay cost us over €2000, so keep that in mind.

Before digging into the problems, I do want to say that the location is great. It's 2 blocks from the arc de triomphe, with all of the accompanying restaurants, busses, metros, etc. The people who work the front desk were friendly. The air conditioning in the room worked great. Breakfast is a tray that the desk staff assemble and provide for you in a small room on the 1st floor and is basically the same every day with a couple of items coming or going day by day, but was also decent, more than enough food and, we felt, very reasonable. Our "family room" was small, but the space was used efficiently.

On the other hand, more than once in our 5 day stay the front door was locked when we returned in the afternoon because no one was at the front desk and they apparently just lock up when they step out. And the building is a mess. It is clearly very old and a lot of things are in rough shape or simply showing their age in some way. The fire alarm went off twice on two different days at around 9am. The stairs up to the guest rooms are uneven and poorly lit, and we felt like everything was a bit cramped.

Do not discount the other reviews that mention how tiny the elevator is. One person with a moderately sized piece of luggage and nothing else or 2 people who are VERY friendly will fit. It has significantly less than 1mx1m of usable floor space and often has various issues that prevent it from working at all.

The rooms are very worn in general. The linens are clean and changed daily and the drapes are relatively new, but the electrical receptacles are so worn and loose that cell phone chargers fall out of them under their own weight. The vinyl flooring in our room was seriously worn and scratched to the point that it can't possibly be cleaned properly any more. Our closet door needed to either be lifted to align it better with its opening or slammed shut in order to fully close and latch.

The bathroom was the biggest problem for us. The toilet seat was literally falling off of the toilet. One side was entirely detached and the other was very loose. The shower "door" only covers half of the opening to the shower area. The rest of the opening has no means of containing water at all so, as you would expect, the entire bathroom floor is soaked after every use. The grout between the tiles was black with mold in many places. There was a small, awkward, sticky window and no fan to evacuate moisture from the room. Worse than any of that was the water leaking from the ceiling at the rate of about one drop per second right in front of the bathroom sink that started on the 2nd night of our stay and persisted until hours before we checked out, despite having brought it to the attention of the front desk in the morning each day. We were actually told that "it happens sometimes". Initially they put towels on the floor to absorb the water, which of course became soaked in short order and then did absolutely nothing. A few days later, after we put the bathroom trash can under the leak, the towels were upgraded to a mop bucket. On the last full day of our stay we woke to the sound of banging above us at around 6am, which we assume was finally an effort to fix the leak because it had slowed significantly by the time we returned that evening. At no point were we offered a refund, discount, or even a different room. Again, remember that this was a €400+ per night room.

Something else that we found very strange was that the hotel requires you to turn in your room key every time you leave the building. Not just when you check out. Every time. I'm sure that they have their reasons for this, but we have stayed in many hotels over the years in a lot of different places and this was a first for us.

We definitely would have gone elsewhere if we had the choice, but by the time we arrived, nothing else was available.

Absolutely disgusting place to be in. Lovely receptionist called Mr Tariq who was very supportive but the hotel itself is just terrible.
We were asked for 100 euros security deposit on top of 22 euros city tax.
100 euros deposit was not mentioned anywhere on trip. Com.
The hotel manager i guess called Sabrina (on phone) refused to let us in without security deposit.

The lights were short circuiting. Lights went off three times in 2 days and we were told there was a problem with their wiring.
Place looked ******* and not at all like a hotel.
On checking out we were told that we will get the deposit back which did not happen untill we went back in again and asked for it and told them that we were still in town and will keep coming back.
Over all not for families
Just the location is a plus point i.e near arc.

Do not stay here! Elevator from the 20’s only fits one person at a time, the rooms are very small and shower is very tiny! -I paid for three rooms prior to arrival and kindly requested to please allow us to get one room prior to the 2pm check in. They refused, per the manager Henri, we had to pay 50 euros to get one room at 12pm. We paid it, since our parents were tired from trip and needed some rest. They had no consideration, bad service! Not family friendly! We had one room on the 7th floor and the elevator only went up to the 6th, so had to take the dark narrow stairs up another floor!

Just don't come here. Booked a room only to be told we couldn't stay here. You can already see the other 1 star reviews. Save your money for better options elsewhere.

Edit: and they like to cop an attitude when they get called out. See their lovely response to their "customers". Not a place I would recommend at all. Like I said, the numerous 1 stars reviews speak for themselves. There absolutely nothing honorable about this place. Two recent reviews posted on bookings.com too via the attached photo.