Hôtel Universel — Hotel in Rivière-du-Loup

In short: Pros- Decent shower pressure. But that's it! Oh and the soap smelled nice.

Major cons: SO DIRTY!!! We Felt gross after our stay. Not rested. We couldn't wait to leave!!!

This was the 2nd DIRTIEST hotel yet! Not impressed. (The worst one was in BC, full of drug addicts and such, but that's a whole other story...)

Based on other reviews, photos, and the hotel architecture we expected a nice decent place to stay. But we cut our stay short due to issue after issue after issue!

First thing I always do in a new hotel room is my check for bed bugs and quick wipe down ect:

First beds...no bugs but dirt and hair! Lots of it! All through the sheets like someone slept in them with dirty feet. Plus a used tissue tucked in the sheets. So, ok, I called down for the beds to be changed. But when I went to the bathroom it too was gross. The counters were not wiped and had several hairs on it, the sink did not drain, the toilet had dried urine on the seat. The shower had hair and grime on the soap holder. The floor had several types of hair and dirt across it. It was awful!!! When I called down for sheets to be changed they asked "Uh ok. Is there a problem?" Would I be calling if there was no problem?!! "Yes. They are dirty. Please May I have them changed..." "ok" they said. No sorry or anything.

However, when they came the comforter was not changed and after finding the state of the bathroom I insisted for it to be changed too. The sheets were paper thin and put directly on the used small mattress pad. The pillowcases were also paperthin. It just makes me wonder how clean anything else under the sheets are or if the mattress pad or comforter is normally changed.

I usually just disinfect light switches, handles, and a quick wipe for the toilet seat. But this was too much. I ended up cleaning it all and still felt gross. They offered to switch rooms but I didn't want to load back up all our cases, and kids, and disinfect another room. We are tired travelers just looking for rest! I wanted a discount but they refused. They gave us breakfast coupons instead. So ok. Fine. I thought maybe I'm just being too picky.

So we went to their restaurant and ordered soup for a light supper. Turns out there was plastic in the soup at the bottom. Great. Another issue. I wondered how clean the kitchen was if the room was so awful. That kind of turned us off. So we went swimming. Nice pool. Cool slide. But the pool was cloudy, and the slide looked like it would topple each time a kid went on it and scared us below! Maintenance seems to be lacking greatly. But we were glad to have something for the kids to do.

Finally we return to the room only to see that the bathroom fan did not work and the old air-conditioner is having a hard time getting the room cold. It ran all night.

In the morning we were excited to have breakfast without worrying about the cost, as something positive to start the day. However, this ended quickly when I found a human hair in my eggs Benedict. As well a fork and a spoon had dried food on them. Although this may have been just a dishwasher unit needing hotter water everything together made us not feel very hungry anymore. To top it off the waitress seemed to be all to familiar with the coupon. Which makes me wonder how often these are handed out and whether we really got any compensation for the poor stay!

We left feeling gross from a rough night on paper thin sheets on a used mattress pad, in a humid hot room, a grimy shower, and hairy breakfast. I took photos of everything out of disbelief. I could not wait to leave.

At some point I am certain this was a gorgeous hotel, and still could be with its excellent seating areas throughout, grand stairs, and a unique modern mixed with vintage architecture. Sadly it is now run down because it is not cared for. It is a true shame.

We...

I was very disappointed with my last stay here. My wife and I drove from Ottawa on December 24th (It's almost a 7 hour drive) and checked in around 9:30 PM. The person checking us in was mumbling the whole time, barely looked at me, and every time I asked a question, he had this stupid look on his face. I'm fully bilingual and spoke to him in French as well so it wasn't a language thing.

We had a room on the first floor because we had our dog with us, and we had our own parking spot in front of our door. When I asked the front desk where the parking was, all he said was just around the corner.....There's like 50 parking spots just around the corner and the room numbers for each spot are barely visible unless you pull up right in front. We found our room, but the snow hadn't been cleared for several hours and we almost drove up the curve because the parking spot actually starts slightly to the right of the room and not directly in front. So I cleared the snow and parked the car. Already a bad experience so far, after a 7 hour drive.

Then we checked into the room, and both my wife and I immediately looked at each other, and I say "Man it smells in here!". My wife thought it smelt like cat piss I thought it was more of an old cigarette smell. I complained to the front desk but they were "fully booked" and couldn't give us another room. So we slept the first night with the sliding door open.

The furniture in the room looked more like a dumping ground than an actual hotel room. It was old and worn, and everything was broken.

The next morning, we decided to give the pool a try, and yea.....Absolutely horrible. The water was pretty cold, even all the kids in the pool were complaining and you could see them shaking as they got out. We'll at least there is a hot tub, right? Wrong! The hot tob was maybe one degree warmer than the pool. We mentioned this to the front desk, and they didn't care one bit because I went again the next day after a workout, and it was the same.

Talking about workouts....the "gym" here is a very small workout room. It's very small and any more than 2 people in that room would be extremely awkward.

There was an arcade room that was pretty cool, even though not all the arcades worked or some had joysticks that didn't work.

There was a restaurant in the hotel but we didn't bother trying it because if the rest of our experience was any indication of the quality of service and food we would get, we would be wasting our money.

All in all, unless you have kids that are easily distracted and like swimming in cold water, I would look at booking another hotel. It's sad to say because this hotel has a lot of potential, but you need an owner who cares to take it to an...

I'm copying my review over from TripAdvisor:

Despite the helpful customer service we received before checking in (good communication before reserving and pre-arrival), we really felt ripped off for the price we paid. Our room was a basic hotel room and for $250 we were frustrated with our experience. It was many small issues which alone wouldn't have been a big deal, but together soured the experience.

The screen door to the parking lot was broken when we arrived, with the screen coming away from the frame.

Someone was parked in the spot reserved for our room, so we had to take someone else's down the row.

The bath wasn't usable. The plug - a mechanical one, not the typical rubber stopper- despite having an indication to push it down to allow you to fill the tub, did not seal at all. This was really unfortunate, because the shower had great pressure and the bathroom was clean and modern-looking. We were so looking forward to a soak after 10 hours of driving, and had to settle for a quick shower instead. The towels were thin and scratchy.

Despite a sign next to the TV which indicated that an HDMI cable was included to allow us to connect our laptops to the TV, there was no such cable and so we were unable to watch Netflix except by balancing our laptop between the beds.

Room service ended at 9 p.m. which I find odd for a hotel of this size. We ended up having our road snacks for dinner, as we arrived too late to order. The prices for room service were also high, especially considering the dated menu and poor reviews of the restaurant... all those online comments about food poisoning, burnt items and other complaints don't exactly make you want to splash out and treat yourself.

There were no available outlets on the nightstand or near it for phones, which meant we had to plug them in across the room or unplug what was on the nightstand. They were also hard to reach, being low to the floor behind a heavy piece of furniture.

The AC made a lot of noise and wasn't having much effect on the room - we ended up bringing in and assembling two fans we'd purchased on holidays to cool down enough to sleep.

Despite soft and comfortable sheets/duvets/pillows, the matresses themselves were cheap and hard with a boxspring made of stapled pressed wood.

The final straw was a loud event taking place in the hotel with music pounding away until late at night.

Overall, for the price we paid we were looking forward to a luxurious experience at the end of our trip - instead we were annoyed and uncomfortable going to sleep and got out of there ASAP the...