Hôtel Particulier Le 28 - Small Luxury Design Hotel — Hotel in Aix-en-Provence

This is a beautiful old building, carefully decorated, a couple of minutes' walk from the old town. If you are not au fait with the phrase "hotel particulier", it's important to realise that what is on offer is a range of bedrooms in someone's private house, so more guest house than hotel. We had arrived earlier than expected and so offered to drop our bags and come back at the checkin time of 3pm but were assured that an early arrival was no problem, were welcomed in by the owners, had our bags taken up and were shown around.

It would be prudent to look carefully at the listings here and on other web sites, or you might believe there is a spa, pool, bar and restaurant on site, but in fact these are recommendations for those in the area you might wish to go to. We knew this before we booked but I can understand why some reviewers may have felt misled, as the photos and descriptions are not very clear on which things are onsite and which are not. It was also not very clear to what extent the lounges and gardens were for guests' use - they certainly felt a lot more like the family's private space than one in which guests were welcome.

We booked the Double Room, the smallest of the rooms, but which was still a good size. It is important to note if booking via the booking dot com web site that many features and amenities listed as being provided in the room are simply not there. The only thing we really missed was a kettle and the ability to make the first coffee of the day, and so the owners did put one in the room for us. They said they had changed some of the facilities in the rooms, so it would be a really good idea for them to update their listings on web sites. (They were amenable to requests generally - one evening, they also kindly agreed to chill a bottle of wine for us in their own fridge, so that we could drink it on the small public balcony.)

The room is nicely decorated on the whole, though the area behind the bed seemed oddly to have been left unfinished with dangling wires coming out of messy holes in the wall. The bathroom was huge and is really smart (with the exception of the toilet which looked like it was the last one left in Bricomarché.) The Grohe shower looked great but unfortunately the main shower was so high up on the ceiling that it did lose most of its pressure and temperature - but the hand-held shower was fine.

Unfortunately, the bed was extremely soft and squishy and we found it difficult to get a good night's sleep. The mattress - the single most important item in a hotel room - had clearly seen better days and was long overdue for replacement. On the day we left, I was checking under the bed to make sure I had not left anything behind and saw that in fact the entire bottom of the bed itself had collapsed and the mattress was being held up in the middle with a narrow strip of chipboard. Given the relatively high nightly cost of the room and the great emphasis on luxury and comfort in the advertising, I think it is not unreasonable to expect better than this.

Although nice to look at at first glance, unfortunately this place does not really live up to its promises. During our trip to France, we stayed at four different accommodations at a range of different prices. Le 28 was the most expensive by quite some margin, but was easily the least satisfactory in terms of facilities, comfort and value.

One further thing which clouded our experience: an hour after we checked in, the hotel received a handful of new 5* Google reviews - posted by the personal and business accounts of the owners themselves! Posting fake ratings of your business is probably quite common, but doing it under your own name seems bizarre and raises questions about some of the other good reviews. This led me to read some of the reviews on the Booking web site. A number of reviewers had made similar criticisms to those above - many of these reviews have been responded to with an astonishing level of denial and personal abuse. Reading these was why we did not raise any of these issues while we were there....

Very disappointed. The family that owns the property lives on the first floor and uses the lobby as their living room. Strollers, basinets, family etc are in the entry and living area making both the lobby and entry uninviting. The feeling was that we were staying in a room within their house, vs. a hotel.||The specific room we booked (months in advance) was double booked - we were told we needed stay in a different room….then move once the room we had booked was unoccupied. …which we did by ourselves.||A friend traveling with us received a note on the day of our check-in. The note explained her booking was being cancelled due to a maintenance issue and was now booked at a different hotel. Several issues with this unexpected change. First, the new hotel was on the other side of the city (20 min walk, and about the same time by car). Second, the owner denied our request to shift our reservation to the same hotel. The unexpected change and denial of our request to move with our friend created complications that simply were not necessary. ||The rooms were significantly more rustic than expected - very worn, slightly broken and or wobbly furnishings. Bathroom faucets and showers all had issues functioning properly. ||Finally, breakfast was included as part of the fee. Our first morning we could not find staff to inquire about the breakfast. Turns out plates were premade placed on a table where others were eating with a towels over the plates. Guests are expected to know the towel signifies uneaten vs. another guest’s completed meal. We decided not to bother with breakfast the second day. ||Positive notes: the family helped daily with the parking of our car, the staff provided extra Nespresso pods for our coffee maker at no extra charge, and the staff was friendly. ||Bottomline, for the mount of money paid the experience was not...

Let me begin by saying that the property is in an excellent location, and that the proprietors were lovely and helpful. Yes, Antonio will park your car for you, which is a special treat when you are already stressed at having to find the property in a restricted area of an unfamiliar city. |I selected this hotel precisely because it had only 4 rooms and we were 4 couples traveling together. I thought that we would have access to those living and dining rooms without bothering other guests. However, the 2 beautiful public rooms showcased in the photos are not public at all. They are the owners living space. Had I known that, I never would have elected to stay here. The owner’s family was visiting, so I ended up feeling much more like an intruder than a guest. |Breakfast is not included, so this is actually a “guest room” and not a B&B. I saw all 4 rooms and they looked like their photos, but as others have mentioned the shower designs are lacking. I would expect water damage on the ceilings of the rooms below the showers eventually. |It was very hot in our room, we could find no thermostat nor could my husband find any incoming or outgoing vents in our room. We had to leave the windows open and I got more than one mosquito bite in the night. In all fairness, one of our party was shown how to find and operate the air conditioning. On another hand, a 3rd couple said their room was freezing. |I never could get the tv on, even after following the included instructions. My husband is our family expert with remote control devices and he couldn’t get any channel either.|The Wi-Fi instructions were perfect. |While I found the prices we paid to be reasonable, I would look elsewhere if you are expecting something like I...