I have stayed in this hotel recently for weeks on end, so I think I can write with some authority about what kind of hotel it is and what can go wrong from the customer's point of view. Perhaps the biggest issue is noise. There appears to be little soundproofing between the rooms, and it is clearly unfit for purpose. Worse still is how the noise can sometimes be dealt with. On a recent visit I had a very unpleasant experience on my first night back to the hotel. At 1am, there was a lot of noise from the room of one of my neighbours. I called reception and spoke with Claudio, the person in charge. I explained the situation and asked to change to another room. Claudio sounded sceptical and said he was going to check the room from where I said the noise seemed to be coming. I told him that I was hearing noise not from the corridor but from my room, and predicted that he might not necessarily hear anything from the corridor. He phoned me back and said: ”the weirdest thing is that I heard no noise”. I told him it wasn’t at all “weird” and reminded him of what I had said. He suggested that I move to the room next door - the other side of the room from where the noise was coming. I told him I wanted to move away from, not stay beside, the noisy room. Soon after I moved to the new room, a couple entered a neighbouring room and started to shout and argue. I spoke to Claudio again. He sounded even more impatient now, and again expressed doubt that there was any noise occurring. He told me that I could move to yet another room - but warned me: ”you will still have neighbours no matter where you go.” It was now after 2am, and I was exhausted. Claudio's badge was not visible as he walked in front of me, and so I asked him what his name was. He turned around and said ”Claudio” and then pointed to his badge and said, sarcastically, ”you can see it on my badge.” I asked him not to patronise me, that I was not stupid, and also that I did not have to be reminded that there are always neighbours in a hotel. I reminded him that, as a frequent visitor to Eurostars hotels (I had spent almost 4 of the previous 12 months living in them in and around Porto) that I had never encountered such unprofessional, patronising, rude and arrogant behaviour from a Eurostars employee or one from any other hotel. Eurostars later asked me to give an account of my stay there. I told them about the above experience. I did not receive any response from them. However, when I spoke about the incident to the manager, Marco, he told me he was aware of my complaint. His position about it was strangely ambivalent. After apologising, he qualified the apology with: “I would ask you to look at it from our point of view.” His point that we all have bad nights. True enough, but there are limits to what a customer should be expected to tolerate. Another night, after 1am, when I asked to change room again due to noise next door, another person in charge, Ruben, curtly told me I could on
Very Good
77 Reviews