Riviera Elysées Hotel - Paris — Hotel in Paris

We stayed at the Riviera Elysees hotel for 5 nights recently and while I rarely write reviews, this stay warranted warning people about what to expect. For a bit of perspective, the stay cost us over €2000, so keep that in mind.

Before digging into the problems, I do want to say that the location is great. It's 2 blocks from the arc de triomphe, with all of the accompanying restaurants, busses, metros, etc. The people who work the front desk were friendly. The air conditioning in the room worked great. Breakfast is a tray that the desk staff assemble and provide for you in a small room on the 1st floor and is basically the same every day with a couple of items coming or going day by day, but was also decent, more than enough food and, we felt, very reasonable. Our "family room" was small, but the space was used efficiently.

On the other hand, more than once in our 5 day stay the front door was locked when we returned in the afternoon because no one was at the front desk and they apparently just lock up when they step out. And the building is a mess. It is clearly very old and a lot of things are in rough shape or simply showing their age in some way. The fire alarm went off twice on two different days at around 9am. The stairs up to the guest rooms are uneven and poorly lit, and we felt like everything was a bit cramped.

Do not discount the other reviews that mention how tiny the elevator is. One person with a moderately sized piece of luggage and nothing else or 2 people who are VERY friendly will fit. It has significantly less than 1mx1m of usable floor space and often has various issues that prevent it from working at all.

The rooms are very worn in general. The linens are clean and changed daily and the drapes are relatively new, but the electrical receptacles are so worn and loose that cell phone chargers fall out of them under their own weight. The vinyl flooring in our room was seriously worn and scratched to the point that it can't possibly be cleaned properly any more. Our closet door needed to either be lifted to align it better with its opening or slammed shut in order to fully close and latch.

The bathroom was the biggest problem for us. The toilet seat was literally falling off of the toilet. One side was entirely detached and the other was very loose. The shower "door" only covers half of the opening to the shower area. The rest of the opening has no means of containing water at all so, as you would expect, the entire bathroom floor is soaked after every use. The grout between the tiles was black with mold in many places. There was a small, awkward, sticky window and no fan to evacuate moisture from the room. Worse than any of that was the water leaking from the ceiling at the rate of about one drop per second right in front of the bathroom sink that started on the 2nd night of our stay and persisted until hours before we checked out, despite having brought it to the attention of the front desk in the morning each day. We were actually told that "it happens sometimes". Initially they put towels on the floor to absorb the water, which of course became soaked in short order and then did absolutely nothing. A few days later, after we put the bathroom trash can under the leak, the towels were upgraded to a mop bucket. On the last full day of our stay we woke to the sound of banging above us at around 6am, which we assume was finally an effort to fix the leak because it had slowed significantly by the time we returned that evening. At no point were we offered a refund, discount, or even a different room. Again, remember that this was a €400+ per night room.

Something else that we found very strange was that the hotel requires you to turn in your room key every time you leave the building. Not just when you check out. Every time. I'm sure that they have their reasons for this, but we have stayed in many hotels over the years in a lot of different places and this was a first for us.

We definitely would have gone elsewhere if we had the choice, but by the time we arrived, nothing else...

This Hotel was a fever dream. Crazy scenes when they couldnt find my "room". I stayed at another Hotel in Ternes and saw the Riviera Elysees from outside, its equally perfectly located right near Triumphe de Arc/Champs Elysees, and has a charming movie look from outside. I decided to spent a Night there. The inside sadly isnt kept up with, and has a bit of a cheap modern attempted look to it (Ikea-ish prints), which also doesnt match with the old building. I went there on Wednesday and the guy listed the prices for the upcoming days. Friday had the cheapest at 115 so I took Friday. After a few smirks of his, thinking I misunderstod him, because I initally asked for the Wednesday, he booked me on Friday. I payed the room on Wednesday. I came back on Friday and they didnt find the key for my room. I was given the receptionists phone to talk with the boss or whatever, as we explained our respective situations. The receptionist was friendly this time, although he could communicate a little more. After 30 minutes waiting we went into the tiny elevator together pressed against each other pretty much, to go to my room. He opened the room and there was a woman sleeping inside it, which woke up and was angry/shocked. Her bed was literally right next to the door. He knocked again to ask for her Name, apparently she wasnt in their reservation system or something. The receptionist was as stated friendly, but he definitely should have apologized to the Woman for what had just transpired. I dont believe the woman scammed the room. Then we hopped into the tiny elevator again with the metal/rust frames and I thought if I am in a movie right now. Finally I was given another room, there were a few keys/open rooms, so this should have been do-able earlier in my opinion. The next day I heard the cleaning lady infront of my room and around 11:20 I asked her if I could do my check-out at 1 instead of 12. She didnt speak English well, but I clearly signaled 1, said 1, and asked if, okay? She said Oui. Well, that somehow didnt register and they came knocking at my door at 12:05. I took a quick shower and left. The room itself was decent. I cant say anything bad about the 3 receptionists I dealt with, but there are some organizational issues at play here. They were all Arabic and so was the boss man on the phone, but they all spoke English well. This Hotel was like a 2.5 for me. I wouldnt pay more than 120-ish...

We arrived at the hotel after midnight due to our train schedule. I called the hotel at 2:00 PM to confirm that we would be arriving late at night.||When we arrived, we had to pay a €100 deposit in addition to the city tax.||The receptionist informed us that our room was on the seventh floor, but that the elevator only went up to the sixth, so we would have to take the stairs for the last floor. He also told us that we would need to leave the room key at the reception every time we left.||At the time, I found it strange, but since it was already very late, we went up to the room.||Upon entering the elevator (which was very old), it couldn’t fit both me and my boyfriend together. I had to go up first. When I arrived alone, there was a man sitting on the stairs in front of our room, in the dark. I was startled and waited by the elevator door for my boyfriend.||After he arrived—since only one person could go up at a time with luggage—he took the stairs and found the room open.||When we entered the room, we saw it was awful! The toilet was broken. The shower enclosure was only partially installed. The bed was dirty and messy. The decorative lights above the bed were all crooked. When we opened the wardrobe, the pillows were thrown on the floor.||In short, it was impossible to stay in a hotel like this! We immediately went back down and informed the receptionist that we would be leaving right then to find another hotel.||When I spoke to the receptionist, he told me I wouldn’t be able to get my deposit back (€100) unless I returned to the hotel in person the next day.||When our Uber arrived to take us to another hotel, the laundry staff had left a large cart in the middle of the hallway with huge bags of clothes on the floor, blocking our way out. We had to struggle to make our way to the car.||Because of all this, I do not recommend this hotel. Terrible! I hope I can...