New Hôtel Gare du Nord

The room was dirty, the bed was awful, and it had only one pillow. There was an instant coffee maker in the lobby, but no other amenities. They gave two of us just one keycard, and you need the card for power, so I’m sitting in a dark, unheated room while my travel partner is out. I didn’t bother asking for another pillow because they’d said no to everything else. We’d booked two twin beds through Priceline, but they tried to put us in a one-bed room and said we were stuck with it. After I argued, they moved us to a sister hotel around the corner, where they found us a room with two beds. I’ve never stayed in a worse hotel, and paying over $300 for two Paris nights here makes me feel ripped off. This shouldn’t be on respectable booking sites. Avoid it.

We won’t be coming back. The photos make the room look better than it is, and our room was tiny and basic. Traffic and station noise came straight through the single-glazed window, and overnight construction outside made it hard to sleep. The hotel can’t control that work, but double glazing would have helped. As other people have said, the lift is a joke, barely big enough for one person with luggage.

The high price doesn’t match how basic New Hotel is. My heater didn’t work in the cold weather, and when I told reception, they said there was nothing they could do. The lift was out of service the whole time, so I had to walk up and down six floors repeatedly and carry my luggage down myself at checkout. There was no apology or compensation. They don’t seem to care about reviews. Completely unacceptable and not worth the money.

The hotel is a dump, and the business practices felt shady. I booked a triple room for three people, but was told I had to pay an extra fee for the third person on top of what I’d already paid. They also charged us an additional “city tax” even though the third-party booking site said taxes and fees were included. If you leave the property for any reason, you have to hand your hotel key to random strangers at the front desk. When I asked to cancel, they refused and wouldn’t refund the room or tax money.