Alba Hotel

The staff are very friendly, I’ll give them that, but I didn’t feel safe in this area. The whole neighborhood smells of urine and sewage, and the bathrooms smell that way too. The hotel is central, but the streets beside it are clearly the red light district and there’s rubbish everywhere. The room was 26C and the AC couldn’t be adjusted, so I kept waking up sweaty. When I asked reception to fix it, they gave me a fan from the 80s that sounded like it might blow up any second. I couldn’t sleep with it running. The fridge in my room didn’t work either. For the price, I expected better amenities.

We stayed at this hotel from February 24 to 28. A local taxi driver told us it was on one of Barcelona’s worst streets, with many homeless people and drug addicts, and that it wasn’t safe to walk there in the evening. It was my birthday and my friend’s birthday the next day. We’d hoped for even a small birthday gesture, but the staff said they don’t provide anything like that, which was disappointing. The biggest upset was the airport taxi transfer: Booking said it was included, but on the day we arrived the hotel told us there would be no taxi. We also had to pay the tourist tax twice, and there were water problems. We were very disappointed and wouldn’t recommend this hotel.

Our stay at Alba Hotel from 10-13 December 2025 was disappointing in several ways. The room wasn’t clean enough: there was visible mold inside the fridge, over the shower pipe, and on parts of the shower area wall. It felt like a hygiene issue, and we were uncomfortable using both the bathroom and the fridge. In room 405, the temperature was around 15 °C when we checked in on 10 December. We told reception, and a technician came but couldn’t fix it, so they gave us an electric fan heater to keep the room warm enough. The shower water was also a problem. It reached about 40 °C for roughly two minutes, then fell to around 25-30 °C, making a comfortable winter shower almost impossible. I reported it at reception around noon on 11 December. In the evening they said it was fixed, but it wasn’t. I complained again around 23:30, when the receptionist couldn’t do anything. Around noon on 12 December, the manager tested the water herself and confirmed it dropped from about 40 °C to 25-30 °C. She called this “normal in Barcelona,” but we don’t consider that an acceptable level of comfort for a hotel. There was also an unexpected 33 € city tax charge. We booked through Booking.com, where the reservation page and confirmation email said the price “includes taxes and charges” and didn’t mention any extra city tax. Being told to pay it on arrival felt misleading and unclear. We can’t recommend the hotel and wouldn’t stay here again.

The location is top notch, and the place is amazingly clean. The rooms are comfortable and practical, and good enough overall. The pillows especially could be better, they’re neck killers :) The receptionists are super nice!