Mama Shelter Lille — Hotel in Lille

I just return from a 2 night stay at Mama Shelter Lille. The hotel was conveniently located for both the Eurostar and the city with most things within a short walk.|When you arrive at the hotel you have to go up in a lift to get to reception and then a second list to get to the rooms.|The room was simple but clean and spacious enough. The had a small but nice bathroom, nice bedding, a decent hairdryer and a room safe. There were also a good number of well placed sockets and useful mirrors near sockets. For me personally there were two main negatives. The first was the air conditioning. When we arrived in Lille is was around 32 degrees C and very humid. I got to the room and the air-conditioning did not seem to work. I did not have time to fiddle with the controls for long as I needed to leave to meet friends. I assumed I had just not found the correct setting yet. I returned very late hoping to get a good night’s sleep, but it was far too hot in the room. The air conditioning still didn’t work. Overnight I was so hot and uncomfortable that I didn’t sleep at all. I resorted to opening my window to try to get some relief but just got bitten by mosquitos. That meant my main day in Lille was ruined as I had no sleep and was cover in bites.|The next morning, I spoke to reception, and they said they would get someone to look at it. She suggested that there is a central control outside of the room and it may need to be switched on. I went out for the day and returned around 4.30pm. Again, when I returned the air conditioning was not working. I called reception and they said they would send someone up. Within a few minutes, and before the maintenance staff arrived, the air conditioning started working. It was clear it had been centrally switched off. The air-conditioning was weak at best, but it did take the edge of the high temperature of the room and allowed me to sleep on my second night.|The second was that the water pressure was not adequate to use the rain head shower. Just a small trickle (insufficient to shower in) came from the shower head. Instead, I had to use the handheld shower to wash myself down which...

I will divide this into 2 sections.

The Stay v The Restaurant

The Stay

Very chic rooms that are fairly spacious. The price is definitely good for what you get in France. The staff at reception were very friendly and helpful. The only thing I would improve is to have a bottle of water in the room (which is quite normal for hotels) and to provide some tourist information for visitors near the reception. But otherwise it was great.

The restaurant

Now this really made me want to go lower. The Mama Shelter restaurant is definitely very excited to give you an authentic French experience filled with rudeness , unprofessional & discriminatory behaviour. When you come to France, you already prepare for this much renowned behavior / hospitality but you don’t expect it from the hotel you’re staying in. You wait 20+ minutes while they serve all other French people. When you try to call the waiter over , they pretend like they don’t see you. So I had no choice but to walk over to reception to get the lady at the front desk to help me and she was very very lovely. However, the whole experience was very very uncomfortable - why do I need to ask the receptionist to get me help to be served in the first place? The staff then tried to be ‘ nice ‘ after possibly already realising that he’s been complained about but it was a gimmick and an act. He tried to offer me a free drink for the ‘ inconvenience ‘ but then proceeded to charge me for it anyway. Very sly ! Eventually I did tell the receptionist (again who’s lovely) and she said she’ll sort that out (hopefully). Maybe the restaurant should have a sign that says ‘ French Only’ .

The Arancini was horrible (the worse I’ve ever had) - but the mussels linguini was tasty except for the fact it HAD NO MUSSELS. 😂 Mussels linguini with no mussels 😂

The only saving grace at the hotel was the receptionist who tried her best and I feel sorry that she’s working in this establishment. Her own sentence ‘ I don’t know how/why this happened ‘ sums up my experience.

I would consider staying again but I’ll stay well clear of the...

Put in a corner room with the curb less accessible shower.

The building was built with the cheapest mechanical system with one temperature for the whole building, guests can only adjust how much air is pushed out but not the temperature. When I raised it, helpful front desk quickly showed up with an extra radiator, so sounds to me this is a known issue.

Here’s the worst part, the curbless shower was not draining properly flooding the entire bathroom. Had to stop using shower before it gets out to the carpet. We got an apology that “oh we have no more room available” and “oh maybe we can send you a technician in the morning… “ I had to pivot to ask for a pile of towels to wipe this up.

Asked for 1 more pillow. The response was, the hotel is full, so we have no more pillow. Do you mean to say if it isn’t full, you will just grab 1 from the other room? What? Why only provide 3 pillow for a king bed to begin with?

I don’t care how hip your design is. The basic function of a hot shower that doesn’t flood and a sleepable bed with 2 pillows for each person you sold the room to, is the bare minimum.

It was also filthy by the way. The staff who helped us was nice, but the housekeeping and maintenance team clearly is sleeping on the job. Mama Shelter needs to be honest that they are in the restaurant and party business and hoteling is barely an...