Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot

Hotel Review: Warwick Barsey Hotel, Brussels, Belgium

Forgot to post that review I made during my stay in February 08 in this excellent boutique hotel on Avenue Louise - the "chic" district in Brussels.

Another visit in Brussels over the weekend needed a decent hotel considering how good value for money is the hotel market in the Belgium capital. Even luxury hotels are affordable.

Warwick Barsey Hotel is quite a unique hotel, formerly known as Hyatt Barsey, and presents some nice decoration features. The same guy behind Hotel Costes in Paris - Jacques Garcia - decorated the hotel.

We arrived on a late Friday evening where we were invited to join a dinner table at the “Boudoir” night organized every Friday in the restaurant of the hotel. From midnight, the restaurant turned to be a nightclub with very chic people coming in.

Our room was absolutely fantastic. We had one of these suites on the top floor with a living room, a bedroom and a huge bathroom with Jacuzzi, fantastic shower and all amenities from Eau de Thé Vert from Bulgari. The hotel has a very welcoming staff from the reception to the bar & restaurant.

This hotel is what you need if you need a weekend breakaway in a centre of Brussels and want to impress. The weekend rate is around €120 per night if you book a bit in advance.

Check out as well the interview I have conducted with the General Manager, Stéphane Vohl.

Warwick Barsey Hotel, Brussels, Belgium
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Hotel Review: Grosvenor House, Dubai, UAE

Forgot to post that review I made during my stay in September 07 in this excellent hotel in Dubai.

Our first trip in Dubai led us to stay in this Starwood property Grosvenor House thanks to great advice we had from Trailfinders. We stayed there 4 nights from Sunday the 9th until 13th September.

The check-in was very quick and one of the receptionist came with us to show us our room. In fact it wasn't a room. We were upgraded to have an apartment on the 8th floor instead. We were so lucky.

The hotel is split between hotel rooms and apartments. Elevators lead to rooms, others to apartments only. Both products have a separate reception and concierge as well.

The apartment we had was very functional with a fully equipped kitchen with complementary tea and coffee. A living - dining room with the latest technology available on a plasma screen (video on demand, music on demand, international channels, Internet, ...). We have a huge bathroom with a separate shower with toilets. Another toilet room was near the living room as well. Our bedroom was also equipped with this plasma screen with same technology. Both bedroom and living room were giving you a view of the street side with all the building in construction and the one finished. Windows must have been soundproofed as we were never disturbed by the noise. We were very delighted by the comfort of the king size bed. Matrice, duvet and pillows were so comfy that we need to ask the hotel where they found those to equip our house in London.

Every day we had complimentary fruits and petits fours + water bottles. In the bathroom, all amenities were provided by Molton Brown. I have heard that in the hotel, amenities are from Bulgari with their superb fragrance Thé Blanc.

The hotel has plenty of restaurants to choose from. We tried the best buffet I ever come across at Sloanes where you eat oysters, sushis, lobster on the grill, ribeye steak and so many dishes. The dessert buffet is also very impressive with a chocolate fondue. Breakfast is also served at Sloanes and is very good and full of choices. On the last night, we tried the Indian restaurant Indego which is probably one the best Indian restaurant I have ever eaten. Don't expect the usual Korma or Madras but more original and innovative dishes from a clever and talented chef.

There is so much to say about this hotel. One more thing, the hotel is not on the beachfront. But you can take a bus provided by the hotel who will take you to the sister hotel Le Méridien Beach & Resort and then take the facility of the hotel (it's just a 3 mins drive). At the hotel, they will provide you a towel and you have full access to both swimming pools and the beach.

Finally, the hotel has also outside the Budha Bar recreated which quite impressive and very busy at night.

If you are looking for a modern hotel with comfortable rooms in Dubai, Grosvenor House is for you whether you are Leisure or Business.

Grosvenor House - Dubai
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Hotel Review: Le Méridien Garden Beach, Juan-les-Pins, France

Juan-les Pins in the winter is not the most exciting place to be in French Riviera. But I was there for business and I was lucky enough to stay at the Méridien Juan Les Pins for 2 nights in November.

I think I was upgraded because I got a seafront view double bedroom where my reservation says “city view”. The joy of sleeping with the sound of the waves is really exquisite. The room was of neutral cream white colour with a big sofa chair to watch the TV. I also had a nice balcony to enjoy the fantastic view of the Mediterranean sea. The bathroom needs a bit of renovation. You can see it has been used for a while and things like shower head need to be replaced.   

Breakfast was very good and offers different kinds of bread and hot dishes like scrambled eggs, bacon.

I also found the staff at the reception very helpful on couple of occasions. We were looking for a restaurant in the city and they clearly helped us out. The next morning, I was stuck at the hotel reception waiting for a taxi and one of the receptionists managed to get me a taxi by sharing with other guests on my way to Sophia Antipolis.      

The week after my stay, I have received an online questionnaire to give my feedback about the hotel. The questionnaire is signed by Roland Vos, the EMEA Starwood VP. This is the first time I ever receive an online questionnaire from a hotel. Usually, they are coming from online travel agents.

Again, Starwood has really met my expectations.

Interested to read more of my hotel reviews? They are here.

Le Méridien Garden Beach, Juan-les-Pins, France
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Hotel Review: Radisson SAS Hotel, Nice, France

My last stay in Nice was at the Radisson Nice in early November where I have been given a business room on the 7^th floor.

Check-in in the evening was very quick and I got to my room in less than 2 minutes. My room was overlooking the city residential area with a large balcony. The room is quite spacious with a long corridor with enough drawers to put your clothes for 2 weeks. The bathroom is designed in a similar corridor. I have really enjoyed the fact that Radisson has taken the decision to make WIFI / Internet access in all rooms free of charge to the guest. This rule applies to other hotels from the hotel chain.

The décor of the room is quite warm with red and yellow colours. I was amused to see an ashtray by the bedside and see the warning message stating it was a non smoking room.

I didn’t have a chance to try the breakfast but I did take a couple of drinks at the bar.

Checkout in the next morning was done in 10 minutes besides the fact that quite a lot of guests were doing the same thing at the same time. Pricewise, the "business" room +  2 drinks at the bar  was around £110 for one night. Not cheap but still reasonable for an upscale hotel (other people call it 4*).

I was impressed by the quality of the room and I will certainly recommend it if you stay in Nice for a weekend. Make sure you ask for the business room.

Interested to read more of my hotel reviews? They are here.

Radisson SAS, Nice, France
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Hotel Review: Melia Palacio De Tudemir, Orihuela, Spain

This hotel is supposed to be the best hotel in Orihuela. We stayed there for a wedding. The hotel used to be called Palacio and has beautiful decoration throughout the hotel. Especially the dome when you walk up the stairs. After 5 mins check in, we went to our room on the 4 floor, 418.

The room is spacious with a bathroom in marble. We had also a small balcony. The bathroom amenities are of good quality. There is also a lot of place to store your clothes. There aren’t many international channels which work on the TV. This is probably the only negative point in our stay (not even TV5 for French speakers like me)

The breakfast is very good and varied from cold meats, smoked salmon, cheese and more.

Melia is A very good 4 star hotel at affordable price. We only paid €85 for 1 night, breakfast included. Very good deal for a good hotel between Murcia and Alicante.

Interested to read more of my hotel reviews? They are here.

Melia Palacio de Tudemir, Orihuela, Alicante, Spain
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Hotel Review: Yotel Gatwick Airport, South Terminal, UK

I was looking forward to experience this new hotel concept. I have heard some many times about Yotel. I have booked on their website a premium cabin room (room #6) for 8 hours.

The hotel is located on the South Terminal of Gatwick not too far from arrivals. I arrived at their automatic front desk to try to check in but unfortunately I couldn’t succeed. My reference number stored on my mobile (after the booking, the website allows you to SMS the booking reference) contains 5 digits and 1 letter but the automatic check only allows 5 characters. The guy at the reception gave us our key card.

The room is quite compact but has all the comfort you need for an 8 hours sleep. The premium cabin offers a proper double bed. Each room comes with an en-suite shower room. You have the LCD screen showing on-demand movies, about 30 TV channels and Internet. You can also plug your laptop to a broadband connection or via WIFI for free. Another feature in the room is the difference light ambiance you can adjust by the bed (full light, purple, bed light, just shower).

I was annoyed by some constant noise in the middle of the night probably coming from the ventilation system. 4am, I gave the room key card back at the reception and was on my way to catch my flight. This is hotel is really good to avoid the pain of getting very early to catch an early flight (with all the stress coming with it). 8 hours of sleeping in Yotel cost me £67 only.

Interested to read more of my hotel reviews? They are here.

Yotel Gatwick
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Hotel Review: Novotel Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, France

This wasn't the first time I have stayed at a Novotel hotel.

Novotel Sophia Antipolis fits absolutely with the brand standards. Good size room with sofa bed to accomodate a 3rd person if needed. The décor is well... Novotel standard color and furniture. I was on a business trip and I think Novotel does a good job to provide what you need at a reasonable price (around 100€ per night).

I have ordered a room service in the evening and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food on my plate (Salmon with penne pasta + Cured Ham + Goat Cheese). The choice of TV channels in the room is great.

By the reception, you have a large selection of the latest French comics (BD in French) which is great if you are bored in the evening or if you can't sleep. I thought the breakfast was very average with not so good scrambled eggs and bacon. This is the area where the hotel should improve. The good news was the fact I could have my breakfast outside under the pine trees.

I will definetely stay there again. (actually I did this week!)

Novotel Sophia Antipolis, France
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Hotel Review: The Chedi Muscat, Oman

We’ve stayed at the Chedi Muscat in Oman a day after the reopening from the 2^nd September until the 10^th. The hotel was indeed closed for renovation during the summer after the cyclone Gonu damaged the Muscat area back in June this year.

Besides the advice from a travel agent in London not to go to this hotel until they got full confidence that the hotel was up and running properly, we decided to go against their advice and decided to book direct with Leading Hotels of the World. Also, we did stay at their sister hotel The Chedi in Phuket back in 2001 and were delighted by our stay. I am glad we made that choice since our stay at the Chedi was beyond our expectations.

We had a Chedi Club room which is slightly bigger than the Serai room with 2 separate basins, a separate shower and toilet. The room is very well neutrally decorated with a view overlooking one of the patio gardens. In terms of in room facilities, we thought for a week, there wasn’t enough room in our cupboard to arrange properly our clothes. Besides that, everything was very convenient for us.

The hotel has 2 large swimming pools with one only reserved for people aged +16 to respect the calm and privacy of the guests.

The adult swimming pool is nearby the beach and provides huge sofa sun loungers, which attract most of the guests early in the morning. Those sofa beds come on “first come first served” basis. There is no reservation allowed which is really appreciable for people like us who wake up early. The other swimming pool is also very nice and very good size. You could also have dinner outside nearby this pool with a very nice view at night.

The food is exceptional but doesn’t come cheap. But what you get on your plate is really good and savoury. Even the burger at the swimming pool is absolutely yummy. The different kitchens (Asian, Indian, Pastry) are inside the restaurant and are run by a young Australian chef and his French sous chef who makes excellent pastry. We nearly have dinner there every night and it feels like eating in a 1 Michelin star restaurant for a week. The hotel has also opened a new restaurant by the seaside that we experimented on the first opening day.

Breakfast is probably one of the best one I have ever come across with choice of different cooked breakfast on demand.

We have also tried the SPA 3 times with Balinese massage and the hot oil massage for a 1hour30 session. Absolutely divine and relaxing.

This hotel feature among the top hotels in Middle East and rightly so. It also features from now on my favourite top 5 hotels I have visited...

The Chedi Muscat, Muscat, Oman
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Hotel Review: Hotel de Mougins, Mougins, France

I have stayed in the Hotel de Mougins on business for one night. The hotel entrance gives you a good idea of what this hotel is about...meaning privacy, small and charming.

The hotel is a 4 star hotel with swimming pool and a lovely garden from where you can access to your rooms. I have a room on the 2nd floor 216 with a balcony but there are also some rooms on the ground floor with semi private gardens. A nice swimming pool is also available to guests very close to the rooms.

The style of the room and the hotel overall is very much typical of the South East of France. The restaurant is also very good. We had a set menu so I can't comment of the overall experience. But we had a good meal outside in the garden. Breakfast is continental and nothing special. The only negative point is the bathroom which fails to give you power shower in the morning. I guess all guests were having a shower at the same time.

Overall, a very good hotel to stop by if you fancy staying remote from Nice or Cannes.

More hotel reviews & videos available here.

Hotel de Mougins, Mougins, France
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Review of the Holiday Inn Solihull in UK...

My latest stay in a hotel was in Solihull last weekend where I have stayed in the Holiday Inn, which is 10 minutes walk from the train station. Solihull is a very nice city with a good shopping centre called Touchwood. We were welcome very nicely at the reception.

We were given an executive bedroom on the 2nd floor overlooking the garden. Our room was quite modern and with fresh furniture and a lot of pillows on the bed. Bathroom is functional and standard with good power shower in the morning. Breakfast in the morning was of good quality with the usual English breakfast and also the possibility to order scramble eggs or omelettes like you would do at home. The bar was very busy on Saturday night with a wedding reception but the staff was very efficient to get our drinks quickly.

A very good 4 star hotel which is only 5 miles away from the Birmingham NEC convention centre.

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Holiday Inn Solihull
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