The safer bet

The safer bet

To afford the best chances to pick the right hotel in Paris I would recommend you to take 4 steps:

• have a basic understanding of the French rating criteria (see above link to download them),
• check the guests’ reviews on www.travelocity.com, and
• visit the hotel’s own website,
• do not hesitate to e-mail your questions to the hotel owners

For those of you who are not familiar with the service provided by Travelocity, thousands of travellers use this website to write reviews on the hotels they stayed at. As always with such an open forum, you will find both extreme judgments and moderate opinions.

My advice: if a hotel fetches 4 or 5 acceptable-to-good reviews and a couple of very bad ones, put the latter on account of a bad hair day. I don’t know of any hotel which satisfies 100% of its guests throughout the year. Favor moderate reviews with some flesh on the bones: they will usually give you a useful picture of what to expect from the hotel, good and less good.

Visiting the hotel’s own website (make sure it is the hotel’s own) will allow you to view the rooms and bathrooms, and form a better idea of what you can expect. I insist on visiting the hotel’s own website because it is usually the website where you will find the largest number of photos. Commercial travel websites usually skimp on photos.

Lastly, e-mailing your questions to the hotel owners may or may not get you an answer. This usually depends on the proficiency of the receptionist in your language. People at the front desk may shy away from responding by email, just because they don’t feel comfortable writing in a foreign language. Naturally, receiving informative answers to your questions is a good sign that the hotel cares, and that its personnel strives to serve their prospective guests well.

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