L'Esquisse Hotel and Spa Colmar - MGallery — Hotel in Colmar-Ribeauvillé

We really wanted to love this hotel, but sadly , there are some issues. It’s probably the best option in Colmar for family-size suites (we were traveling with small kids), but it’s not a 5-star experience.||Location|Architecturally, the hotel is very striking and visually interesting. The exterior and interiors are very modern, which is a departure from most other Colmar hotels. It benefits from a great location, literally inside the Champ de Mars park (a beautiful park with mature trees, fountains, a carousel and an ice cream stand). We liked that the hotel was relatively easy to drive to with convenient parking (both valet and self-park), but also a very quick and easy walk to both the old town center and to the train station.||Penthouse Suite |We booked a 2-bedroom penthouse suite. The 4th (top) floor is home to the hotel’s 5 penthouse suites, which best we can tell, range from 2 to 4 bedrooms, all with ample outdoor space overlooking the surrounding park. There is a dedicated elevator serving the 4th floor, though oddly, it’s accessed from a small exterior facing lobby, not from the main hotel lobby. To get to the lobby, bar or restaurant, you need to leave the penthouse lobby, walk outside about 30’ down the sidewalk, then re-enter the building through the main lobby entrance. There are pluses and minuses to this arrangement, though overall, we wished we could have more easily accessed the hotel’s public spaces without going outside. ||Our penthouse was beautiful and furnished extremely comfortably. It felt like a design-focused Parisian apartment, with a large common area in the center with sitting area, 6-seat dining table and open pantry area, with each of the bedrooms flanking the space, all bathed in floor to ceiling glass overlooking the private terrace and park beyond. Visually, it’s stunning, and the furniture and materials are high quality. ||There are, however, a few quirks with the suite: |First, and most significant, each bedroom has a bathroom with a sink and shower, with the only toilet in a larger toilet room off the main sitting area, though oddly, despite ample room for a sink, there is no sink in the toilet room, meaning after going potty, you either need to go to one of the bedroom sinks to wash your hands, or use the kitchen/pantry sink where we often had food items for our kids. While this is not an unusual arrangement in older French buildings, it feels very odd (and not hygienic) for a building that was recently purpose-built as a hotel. ||Second, the showers in each bedroom’s bath room are completely open, without any door or even a lip on the floor, meaning the entire bathroom floor (and more) is likely to get wet when you shower. Truly bizarre and frustrating in a new building. ||Third, the suite appears set up for an almost residential experience (exactly what we were looking for with our family staying for 5 nights), with the large sitting area and dining table, and the open pantry area. However, it is seriously lacking in basic thing, such as any sort of hand towel at the pantry sink, and not even a corkscrew to open the wine on offer in the minibar fridge. As we were traveling with small kids for 5 nights, we ended up buying our own silverware, plates and paper towels at Monoprix to make the stay a little easier.||Food & Beveridge |We arrived with our small kids on a Sunday evening, following a 10.5 flight and 2.5 hour drive to get to the hotel. We were dismayed to learn that the hotel had no room service on Sunday or Monday nights (the onsite restaurant is closed those nights), nor had no recommendations of places nearby for takeout or delivery food. Hard to be a 5-star hotel if you can’t help your guests with food (especially in France!). We did order room service for dinner later in the week, though despite two confirmations with the front desk, room service still arrived 20 minutes late and short of the requested number of plates and silverware. They also failed to deliver the dessert that was ordered. ||We had breakfast in the restaurant on the initial 3 mornings we were there, but gave up for the final 2 mornings. The first morning, breakfast was wonderful! A beautiful buffet spread with multiple types of quiche, several flavors of yoghurt, French toast, and other items. The second morning we were excited to go back, but dismayed to see that the buffet had gotten smaller, with fewer yoghurts and no quiche, though we still got a beautifully prepared omelette, just as we had the previous day. Finally on the third day, the buffet was even smaller, with less fruit, less yoghurt, no quiche, no local meat, and no French toast. In addition, the omelette on the third day was gross - greasy and burned. Finally we gave up and decided to simply go to local bakeries instead. ||The bar, which is a beautiful place to hang out, does make nice cocktails, with a friendly bar tender. Highly recommend.||Service|We have mixed feelings on this. People are nice and want to try hard, but it’s definitely not 5-star service. Housekeeping was extremely nice and gracious, and the bar tender is good, though not sure we can single anyone else out. Every time we returned to the hotel with our car, we had to go inside to find someone to valet park it - we never experienced the friendly doorman service that is advertised on the hotel’s instagram. The hotel was helpful with coordinating a really good local photographer for us, though I was turned off on the overly cumbersome process of trying to work with the hotel on booking the photographer. Finally, it became a ridiculous situation to figure out how to open a bottle of wine in the minibar in our room. The rooms have wine bottles in the minibar but apparently are not stocked with corkscrews (despite being in a serious wine region with a large room with a minibar and a dining table for 6), and the front desk was completely unhelpful with figuring out how to open the...

We booked a small trip to this lovely property just before the x-Mas and stayed on a "Executive Room Artist' Studio" category room.|Arrival was smooth and fast, doorman welcomed us on outside and got car keys and luggage's immediately.|Lobby and reception area were decorated nicely for x-Mas and new year.|C/in was fast and smooth.|The location of the hotel is very good. |It's 5 minutes to little Venice and to other tourist areas. |Room was clean and very well decorated.|It was big enough for our family (2 Adults and 1 Kid). It had a balcony which faces to the park and Colmar sign on the park. We had x-Mas markt on the other side of the park. All furniture and items were high quality products which give the impression like 5* Luxury hotel.|Also we had everything for the kid like sleepers, bathrobe, story before the sleep. Turndown service prepared the sofa bed and left a paper of story for the kid and a candy.|Breakfast was limited and not had lot options for us. We asked for cucumbers and tomato which waitress said not available but than she decided to bring some. Breakfast buffet can be better also to include some lactosefree cheese, butter, etc. and some more vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, etc. We had the breakfast first day and didn't have on the rest with this reason.|We wanted to have lunch on lobby bar but it was not possible. Bar menu doesn't include food items and it was not possible to order from room service to the lobby. We didn't want to sit in the room where there is no proper table for the lunch and we couldn't have anything on the lobby as well. So I got some food from X-Mas market which was next to the hotel. And I saw that other guests did the same and sit on lobby with food from outside. It was first time I had this situation in a 5* hotel where I had to have my lunch from outside. I should mention that the staff was helpful but they said that the kitchen is closed... |As the last and very important point that we booked this property to celebrate my wife's birthday. I booked the birthday cake from a bakery which delivered to the hotel. And I booked pink color fresh and eternity flowers from the hotel together with balloons. Cake was delivered by bakery together with some chocolates as a gift from the bakery. And the hotel placed them to the room. |Unfortunately, even as it was confirmed about flowers there were only red fresh roses in the room which my wife doesn't like at all. And there was nothing from the hotel like a small welcome/birthday amenity. |I informed this situation during the c/out as a feedback and showed the confirmation email regarding flowers which I received from the hotel (also they have it and confirmed), I was not offered to take out flowers' amount from the bill. So I paid for flowers which was wrong and my wife...

I was traveling with my husband, our 2 teen kids and my sister so we booked one of the 3 bedroom/3 bathroom spacious apartments on the top floor of the hotel. ||General|Beautifully decorated, modern hotel with delightful and helpful staff. ||The breakfast is 5 stars. It is an incredible and beautiful spread including something for everyone. ||The concierge reached out before our trip and arranged 2 full day tours with an incredible guide, Muriel, and a wonderful driver. I would highly recommend. ||There is a beautiful and modern spa with pool, sauna, steam rooms which you have to book in order to use (no extra charge). But even with booking it can get quite busy and it can be hard to find a place to sit. ||Room|This penthouse apartment is an expensive option but the common space was brilliant for our family of 5 with a fully equipped kitchen and large sitting room and dining space. We loved sitting out on the terrace with a glass of wine in the evening. There is a lot of extra space so the teen kids (who had a smaller bedroom, could leave their open suitcases cases in the common space (where there was a fusball table but no balls).||The penthouse apartment floor has its own private entrance which we enjoyed. ||Areas for improvement||Our main criticism of the room is that it is marketed as 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. This leads one to believe that there are 3 toilets. This is not the case. There are 2 en-suite showers with wash basins and a 3rd bathroom (not en-suite) with a tab and wash basin. ||There are 2 separate WCs and only one of those has a wash basin. The WC with no wash basin is very large so it makes no sense that there is no place to wash your hands. Given how much space is in the apartment it’s a strange bathroom set up - quite inconvenient and should be fixed. ||Given it is marketed as an apartment there should be a washer and dryer. My guess is that the apartments are usually booked for larger groups and longer stays and in most alternatives (airbnb) one would have a washer/dryer. We got some laundry done in the hotel and it was very efficient (returned same day) but it is very expensive. ||Overall it’s a great property in a great location just 10 minutes walk or less from all the main sites in Colmar and close to the station. But I believe they misrepresent the bathroom situation in the apartments and so they lost a...