Apparantly we arrived at the Hotel Grand Aston in the middle of the Nice Jazz Festival, how inconsiderate of us and how convenient it was for the hotel to blame that for every little problem.
I had chosen the hotel as it was one of the few non-smoking hotels in nice, and had booked and prepaid online for a double room. I was fine with the fact that when we showed up at 9am, well before check-in time, the room wasn't ready. The hotel offered to take care of our bags and said that a room should be ready in a couple of hours or at worst by 3pm.
When we returned later we were told that they were still "looking for a room" for us. I'm not sure whether something was lost in the translation, but the phrasing made me a little uneasy.
While the receptionist was "looking for a room" for us, she managed to check in and give rooms to 3 other sets of people who were behind us in line, and also manage to change the room for another man who came down to reception to pick up his new room key.
By some miracle a room suddenly became available and we got our key and headed upstairs. We got to our room and lo and behold who should be coming out of it but the man who had just picked up a key to a different room... I asked if there was a problem with the room. "Oh no", he said.
We walked in and heard boom boom boom the loud bass of music coming from outside. We thought the window as open. It wasn't. We knew immediately why the man had changed rooms and ralised that the better room he had been given was probably the one we were meant to have and they were fobbing us off with the discoroom. We also noticed that the room had 2 single beds instead of a double, and realised that that would be our ticket out of there!
I summoned up my Agatha Cheesefarter alter ego and called reception and said that I had paid a supplement for a double room and that 2 single beds in a noisy location was unacceptable and that they were to change the room immediately. They tried the "Oh but Madame it is the Nice Jazz Festival and we are full" line, only to be told that we had arrived at 9am and that as not everyone had checked in yet there had to still be rooms available. They decided to speak to the manager who called us back to say they had found a double room at the back of the hotel away from the music. We thanked them and they said someone would be along with the luggage and the key to the new room.
The luggage arrived but the key didn't and then they pretended that they hadn't called to say they had another room and that this was the room they had moved us to!
There comes a point when enough is enough, so Agatha, having reached it, took a trip to reception, gave them a piece of her mind, and a few minutes later had the key to a very nice quiet double room at the back of the hotel.
Our new room was much nicer than the original. It was all white with marble floors and a window so you could see into the bathroom from the bedroom (not a feature on most people's wishlist I'm sure!). Another quirk was that the only place there was a mirror was the bathroom sink, where they had thoughtfully decided to give us two, side by side!
All in all the room and the bed was very comfortable, and had we been given this room initially I would have been writing a very different review.
One other niggly thing was that when we went to the rooftop pool there were no towels left, and when we asked the pool barman if he could call down and get more bought up, he told us we should "use the towels in our room". I don't think so.
About 8pm the boom boom boom of the dance music finally stopped. It had nothing to do with the jazz festival at all, but came from the fake beach that had been set up in the park opposite the hotel, for beach volleyball. As soon as that music stopped, the jazz music started, so the rooms at the front of the hotel would have been noisy until midnight.
I think before they merit the "grand" in the hotel name, the staff should be given some customer service training. I was glad we were only spending one night here and wouldn't recommend the hotel to anyone.
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