Fira Barcelona Apartment

The code entry is handy, but there’s no one on site to help, and no room service, laundry, or other hotel services. For what I paid, I think I could have found an actual hotel room. The marketing made it seem more like a hotel than it is.

I expected basic cleanliness and hygiene, but the room didn’t meet that standard. There was a mold or sewage smell, and I didn’t feel safe coming back from the city in the evening. When I was younger, those things might not have bothered me as much.

I only learned at 4pm on check-in day, in Barcelona, that I had nowhere to stay that night. The hotel had cancelled my reservation without telling me. I’d booked weeks earlier and received confirmation, then messaged the day before to check and got no reply. On check-in day, my message showed as read, but the hotel still didn’t respond. After several calls, I finally got through and was told they were full and had no booking under my name. Expedia contacted the owner, who said he must have missed an email or something and had no availability. I spent hours of my vacation dealing with this. Maybe it was for the best, since other reviews mention sewage smells in the rooms and similar check-in problems. Avoid this place if you value your time.

The rooms are small but okay, and you can hear noise from the neighboring room. There was no cleaning service during our four nights. With no reception, guests have to use a code, and some people aren’t used to that, so they bang hard on the door at night. Our window faced a little garden that smelled awful, so we couldn’t open it. Too bad, they could improve these things.