Hotel Catalonia Passeig de Gràcia — Hotel in Barcelona

We stayed here for my wife’s 30th birthday, travelling as a couple with our 20 month old child.||Good Points are:||- Its location is brilliant, easy walking and public transport links to everything you need to see and do.||- The staff were friendly. Id like to mention in particular the restaurant staff who were exceptional and made breakfast with our son enjoyable.||- Breakfast was good. It felt like a nice change to go to a hotel where they make your eggs fresh. Good choices and selections.||Bad Points:||- We stayed in a Duplex Suite split over 2 levels with access to an exclusive balcony on the top floor of the hotel. The room in all honestly needed some work. The ceiling had some sort of a leak causing the paint and plaster to chip off on to the floor. The bathroom on the lower floor was completely missing its door and the edges from where the door once stood was plastered over with thick tape around the edges. As the door was missing the sensor activated light would keep flickering on and off at all times. This became so bad that I had to unscrew the light myself or my son couldn’t sleep.||The air conditioning was okay. It never really felt like it was cooling the room as well as you’d want it to in the peak of a Spanish heatwave and the downstairs AC in particular was a bit old and hanging loose off the wall.||Unfortunately what really spoiled the room for us was an infestation of ants. They managed to find a way through the skirting board (which again was hanging loose off the door and the glue had completely come away) and in the evening and morning we’d wake up to swarms of ants all over the floor. We had only noticed this on our final evening and morning of check out but in all honestly they were probably there before but we were out the entire day. The balcony was completely infested with them, including the neighbouring rooms balconies. I’m amazed the cleaning team didn’t notice them as there were literally hundreds of ants. Upon checkout we weren’t asked how our stay was so I felt I had to mention it and make a point that the room was infested with ants.||- The gym was tiny and outside by the pool. It was one small room with basic equipment. I visited at some point in the middle of the day to see what it was like and the AC wasn’t on, so by the time the room would be cool enough to start a workout I could have walked to another one nearby and had a better workout. ||- Another small point which may not bug everyone - the reception doors are locked at all times and required you to “buzz” reception to open them. I didn’t really understand this with a security guard stood at the door regardless but I assumed maybe it was to keep the area cool from the AC. ||Overall,...

This is a 2 star hotel pretending to be a 4 star hotel. Our stay was terrible from the very beginning. Our room had no natural light and faced directly into another guest room. It’s completely dark and feels like a dungeon. You can’t tell the difference between 8 AM and 11 PM when in the room. We had no desire to spend any time in our room. I feel like the hotel should inform us if our room has no natural light and our room should be heavily discounted.

Customer service is terrible. On the first night I called the front desk to request extra hand towels. They told me they didn’t have any (how could they not have any extra hand towels?). They only had large bath towels, so I said fine and requested a few towels to be sent to the room. The man said no, he’s busy and doesn’t have time to send any up. He told me that if I wanted a towel, I would have to go down and get them myself. Definitely not the service I expect at a “4 star hotel.” On another day, we needed to go to a pharmacy but it was a Catalonian holiday so the pharmacies we went to near the hotel were closed. We asked the front desk if they knew of any pharmacies that would be open. They basically told my husband to check Google and if Google says the pharmacy is open, it might be. Not helpful at all. Their customer service is a joke.

The hotel is very poorly constructed. The rooms are noisy and we constantly heard mechanical noises and buzzing throughout our stay. The finishes are poorly done. You can see plumbing coming loose from the wall. They do not pay any attention to the details.

They also don’t provide something as simple as a bottle of water. It would be nice to have bottled water in the room after a long day of traveling. When I asked the front desk about this, they said they only provide bottled water if you book directly through their website. That is the hotel’s bad excuse to be extremely cheap.

I gave it 2 stars because the beds were comfortable and the location is good. But there are no other redeeming qualities of this hotel. It is nowhere near a luxury hotel, and we will definitely be staying...

Staff worked to help us after theft from our room, but our items were not recovered.

I am updating this review (in particular, "service") to reflect the fact that hotel manager compensated us for the estimated worth of items and cash we had stolen from our room. The hotel staff were helpful after the incident, but that does not undo the stress and disappointment of this experience.

Several items were stolen from my belongings, in particular a necklace that was extremely important to me. I stayed in room 410. This was not the only item taken (other jewelry, about 100 Euros in cash, and my phone charging bank were also taken), but it was the most valuable and personally sentimental. I did not use the hotel safe because I did not expect that to be necessary in a hotel with an excellent reputation and in a nice part of town (plus the safes can be stolen anyway), but my jewelry was hidden in a zipped case, not prominently displayed. The cash was in a drawer. In rooting through my jewelry case, the thief damaged some of my other jewelry as well.

When I reported the missing necklace to the day manager on Sunday morning, October 15th (2023), he seemed genuinely concerned and checked the room himself; he also printed a photo and shared it around with staff to ask if others had seen it. He seemed to care.

However, I was not thrilled with how a complaint about overhead noise was handled (the night before my items went missing), which seemed to be caused by a leak in the room above mine. A different man working at the front desk asked me, "what do you want me to do about it?" Um, I want you to give me somewhere quiet to sleep given that I paid to stay in a place for sleeping. After argument, a solution was offered.

I booked this trip for my birthday and it was ruined by the theft incident. The necklace has sentimental value to me far above its retail value. I am grateful that the manager worked with us to reimburse the damages, but I'm very upset that this happened in the first place. We have been told they are working to find the culprit and prevent this from happening to...