Hilton Paris La Defense — Hotel in Arrondissement of Nanterre

The hotel's location would have been ideal for my last business trip to Paris, but was not so ideal for this weekend break. La Défense is in zone 3, so be sure to buy a zones 1-3 ticket to use the fast RER, otherwise you will have to use the much slower Métro, which has no zones.||I e-mailed the hotel before arrival to ask for the room temperature to be set at no less than 24°C in order to avoid a cold room. When we arrived, the temperature was set to only 22.5°C, and consequently the room had been cooled to this temperature. This was a failure. Although we increased it to 25°C, the temperature in the room was unchanged at 22.5°C several hours later. The front desk arranged for an electric radiator to be put in the room. I understand that the heating function is disabled in October. I question why the cooling function is not similarly disabled in October.||Despite having gold status and although I had told the hotel several days in advance that we were staying for my girlfriend's birthday, they gave us no welcome gift at all. Another failure. This is in contrast to two other Paris hotels who did give welcome gifts last year and the year before. When we stay at other 4* Hiltons, even when it's not a special occasion, we receive a welcome gift.||We were given an upgraded room in view of our gold status. The bed was very comfortable and gave a good night's sleep. There are power sockets on both sides of the bed, including USB-A and USB-C. It's the first time I've found working USB-C sockets in a hotel room, and although they didn't support USB-PD 9V fast charging, their 5V output is ideal for an Apple Watch.||There is no soap provided in the bathrooms, only shower gel. I tried it and it left a greasy film on my skin. Fortunately I found some soap in my baggage, which washed off the greasy shower gel. I should not have had to do this. The hotel should provide soap, particularly on request, but it doesn't. Another failure. On the positive side, the hotel does provide flannels as standard.||The internet speed was around 100Mbps downstream and 60Mbps upstream. Television channels included BBC1&2 Northern Ireland.||When we arrived back late at night, both our physical room keys and the digital key in my iPhone had been disabled. No explanation was provided for this by the front desk. Another failure.||Breakfast was quite impressive, which was free with our gold status. We found everything we wanted and the service was very good. For example, although there was no tomato juice, a waiter kindly fetched some from the bar for me. There was a choice of pork and chicken sausages.||With my gold status, late checkout was offered only until 14:00. I persuaded reception to extend this to 15:00, but our desired 16:00 time was refused because housekeeping go home early.||Although I had prepaid the room in full and the hotel told me that there was nothing further to pay when we checked out, there was subsequently an additional charge for city tax on the card that I had given as a guarantee, which incurs additional charges and an FX conversion, instead of the card that I use for payment. The hotel promptly rectified this error when I reported it by e-mail.||This is the first time that I have given a rating of less than 5 to a Hilton, because there were too many failures. Having gold status, our experience is usually much better with Hilton.||I would return here only on business because of the location, and only with an assurance that all the above failures would not...

Getting to Hilton Paris La Defense is part of the adventure, especially if using public transit. While signs do clearly indicate where to go, there are a few times that you are left wondering if you are going in the right direction.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a friendly front desk employee who confirmed that our room was ready, and based on notes on files, prepared as per our request of no feathers in the room. Toward the end, one employee came to offer assistance with our bags (which is normal), but even as we declined, he stayed right by the desk and somewhat giving us the look for declining.

The front desk area and main lobby look modern and is relatively spacious. On our way to our room, the door did not open... as the front desk clerk had inverted the 1st two numbers on our key card jacket... mistakes happen.

Upon entering the room, we saw a somewhat modern room, with too beds and a nice and modern bathroom, which you could argue is a bit of a luxury in French hotels. The view of the room was right inside the shopping mall, which was not a problem or an issue for us.

While the room had some foam pillows - as requested - the feather pillows had not been removed. This is the kind of passive housekeeping I expect from a Home2Suites or Homewood Suites... but not a standard Hilton. Also, it felt like someone might have been in the room before as there was water and handsoap sud in the bathroom sink, with a few drops of water on the floor.

By itself, the room was very comfortable and AC worked to perfection to keep the room to the desired temperature. We had a relatively good night of sleep and even though we could notice during daytime that soundproofing was not a strength of the property (we could hear people lugging luggage in the hallway), this was a non-issue overnight. WIFI was reliable and there was enough space in the room to move around, even with our copious amount of luggage.

Another housekeeping fail was the next morning when I was taking my shower and then realized that the bottle of body was was empty. From the time I placed a call to the front desk, it took a solid 20-30 minutes to get a new bottle.

As a diamond member, my family got to enjoy complimentary breakfast in the main restaurant. While overall quality was slightly higher at other Hilton's that we visited during our trip, overall, it was better than what you'd get at most North American properties. We were there toward the end of breakfast time, it was busy, and staff were doing a fairly good job at replenishing the food.

I know that with the few service fails, some people would give the property a relatively poor rating. However, I do have to acknowledge that the room itself is excellent, which is why in the end, I am only taking one star off.

Getting to the city from this hotel, even though it is in the suburb is actually quite easy. It is one RER stop (10 minutes) from the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower can also be easily reached from there. The RER line also stops at other convenient locations in the city center. Being in a large shopping mall complex also means access to pretty much anything you might need, and alternative food options.

With all of this in mind, I do recommend this hotel, with the hope that if I was to return, service would have improved somewhat. It feels to me that the hotel might be understaffed in...

I thought this was a decent enough hotel. Rooms were large and clean. Its attached to a mall but quiet especially at night. There really is no activity in that mall until 9am. Plenty of places to get supplies and average quality food in the mall. The hotel was very accommodating to me being Hilton Diamond. I knew this hotel didn't have a great big list of benefits for diamond customers and I needed 2 beds so I wasn't expecting any upgrades. Nonetheless they did give me an extremely early check in so I was very appreciative of that. All members of the staff that I interacted with were friendly. Breakfast was fine. I was there 3 nights and it was the same things each day. Quality was fine, not amazing but more than sufficient with some good things. They start early 6:30am which was great. I specifically selected to stay at La Defense because of cost. My preferred hilton in central paris was charging something ridiculous the week of Roland Garros (at one point nearly $900/night). La Defense was a third of that and I know paris pretty well and I knew I can get into central paris in under 30 minutes by RER from La Defense (albeit if there are no issues). Getting to outer paris like versailles is quick either by RER or bolt and fewer tourists. Getting to roland garros is also about 30 minutes. Downside is getting here from the airport. RER would require a transfer and I wasn't about to do that during AM rush. Bolt ride was about $50 and took under an hour because of traffic. For 2 people that is more than reasonable imo. We went to versailles (my friend had never been otherwise you couldn't get me to go with a gun to my head). RER was fast and cheap(a few bucks and under an hour but finding the M line in that mall was a treasure hunt because several entrances were closed. In retrospect we should have just taken a bolt ride because it was raining). I got us the 9:30am entry slot which is the first. We were the first dozen people in versailles thank the gods otherwise I would been knee deep fist fighting the "influencers". If you stay here, you should get the navigo easy pass for 3 zones or navigo decouverte for a week in 5 zones (cheapest option even for 4 days usage but just a bit of a pain to get).||The biggest issue for me with this hotel was arrival and departure by ride share. There is no way for the driver to drop you off at the hotel. The drivers won't even be able to easily locate the hotel in their app because there is no road for cars. The best you can do is drop off/pick up at the pullman hotel 10 minutes walk away and luckily there are outdoor escalators. I did notice a taxi stand not far from the hotel on one side but I'm sure they would charge a lot more since they would be the only game in that area. The hilton website has a tiny paragraph with an address they tell you to use with ride share. It won't work. It will take you to a dead end alley that looks like where assassins dump their bodies. Hilton should just take that off their website because its...