The hotel itself is very nice, and the location is excellent—strategically located just outside the city wall, making it convenient to access the historic area and nearby transportation. The facilities and overall environment were pleasant.
However, I could not give full marks because of the service we experienced during checkout.
We needed to get to the train station with two carry-on bags and two large suitcases, and I was traveling with my 70-year-old mother. I asked the front desk if they could help call a taxi for us. Surprisingly, the request was refused. I find it unacceptable that such a basic request could not be accommodated.
It was also lightly drizzling at the time. Instead of offering assistance, the front office staff who did our check-out told us that we could simply walk across the street to the taxi stand and get a taxi ourselves. Doing so with multiple pieces of luggage and an elderly parent in the light rain is clearly not reasonable.
What made the experience even more disappointing was that after giving this response, she did not offer any further help and simply ignored us.
By the time I walked to the taxi stand, there was no taxi available. It’s also worth noting that Paseo de la Victoria is a large multi-lane avenue, not a small street that can be crossed easily.
In the end, I had to leave my 70-year-old mother waiting in the hotel lobby while I went across to the taxi stand myself. When a taxi finally arrived, I asked the driver to come back to the hotel entrance to pick us up. We were also rushing to catch our train, so the whole situation became unnecessarily stressful. Thankfully we still managed to make it on time, but this could easily have been avoided if the front desk had simply helped call a taxi.
I have been traveling to Europe multiple times every year since the early 2000s and have stayed in well over a hundred hotels across the continent. In all those years, this is the first time a simple request to call a taxi was so bluntly rejected by a hotel front desk. For a property that presents itself as a five-star hotel, this level of indifference to a basic guest request—especially when an elderly guest is involved—is simply unacceptable and left a very poor final impression of what was otherwise a pleasant stay.
Based on this experience, I would be very cautious about choosing to stay at other Eurostars properties in the future.
