CROWNE PLAZA BARCELONA - FIRA CENTER Luxe

Great Staff. Big Rooms with all the amenities. Beautiful Exercise Room and Spa. Delicious Breakfast was included in my stay. Roof Top Bar With a spectacular view and great ambiance. Great location. Very Accessible to buses and subway.

We visited four hotels over our three weeks in Europe, and unfortunately, the Crowne Plaza Fira Center was our least favorite. We were really excited to stay there, but it disappointed on a few levels. Before digging in to the good and the bad, here’s a bit about the location, for anyone else looking to stay here as a tourist. Location: The Crowne Plaza is located at the Fira Center, which is located right around the corner, perhaps a 7 minute walk, from Plaza Espana. This is awesome, as the Barcelona Airport Aerobus goes right there! For only 6 euros, you can get a non-stop bus from the airport to 7 minutes walking from your hotel. We bought a 4 day unlimited public transit card, which allowed us access to the subway metro and buses. There are just a couple bus lines that stop right outside the hotel. Otherwise, you have about a 7 minute walk to both the green and red metro lines. If you’re looking to do site seeing, the good news is that you can get everywhere with public transit. The bad news is that other than the olympic sites on the top of the hill nearby, you’re not that close to anything. Now by bus / metro, you can get most places in under 30 minutes. If you were hoping to step outside of the hotel to a plethora of cute restaurants, bars, and old school Barcelona, you’re picking the wrong place. We enjoyed the location, as we used public transit to get everywhere. With public transit, it’s almost a full hour to Park Guell, with a transfer. Good: Our Suite – We redeemed points for a room, and we used cash to upgrade to a 1 bedroom suite. The suite was great. It was really large, and it had a huge, modern TV. The bathroom, living room, and bedroom were all separated by doors that close, which meant that we could put our little one down to bed and still hang out in the living area. It was clean and large. Lounge Breakfast – If you have lounge access, either due to IHG status or a paid upgrade, you’ll find breakfast to be quite excellent. In addition to the standard bacon, eggs, etc, you’ll find a great selection of cured meats / jamon, waffles, cereal, muffins, croissants, fruit, cakes, and more. The spread of food was quite extensive, and they actually open up a separate area of the lounge just for breakfast. Bad: Lounge Otherwise – It’s stale and cold. You can, of course, get drinks there all day, and that’s a nice perk. However, don’t you dare try and walk out the door of the lounge with a half drank bottle of soda. The lounge attendants, who we lovingly referred to as wardens, will stop you and inform you that it is completely against policy for you to take that drink out. When you come back with something reasonable like, “But we’re leaving for the day, and this bottle of soda is already open…” you may get a response like, “Thank you for understanding the policy, sir!” Okay… We’re traveling with a 2-year old, and I understand that this hotel is aimed at business travelers, but many of us business travelers enjoy redeeming the points we earn and bringing our families on some trips. If you won’t let me leave the lounge with a drink, then at least don’t give me such dirty looks when I bring my child in. At one point, my child was innocently climbing on a chair, as children do, and the attendant came to stop him from doing so. He was just getting situated in his chair… luckily, they did let us use the lounge to get warm milk for our son, but unlike every other hotel we visited on our trip, there is no way to get milk without asking an attendant for it. I wouldn’t mind this, but they often made me feel like I was really disturbing them. I guess I’m just looking for some family friendly understanding. I paid for lounge access. If you don’t want me to take a drink out of the lounge to my room, then don’t make me feel so uncomfortable when I bring my child in. If you don’t want me to bring my child in, then don’t bark at me if I’d like to grab a beer to take back to my room while my son is napping. Okay so family issues aside, this is not a great post-breakfast lounge. The evening snacks are weak, worse than even many American hotels. Misc Charges on my Bill – When I checked out, there were all these random charges on my bill, like a nightly 40 euro “accommodation charge” in addition to my upgrade fee. Nobody at the front desk knew what this was, and it was frustrating, as it slowed down my check-out process, when I was leaving at 5AM in the morning. Using Perfume to Scent Rooms – I’m not sure what they sprayed in our room before they got there, and I’m pleased that after I called to complain, they never did it again. That being said, it literally took DAYS of leaving our balcony door open to get the smell out. Housekeeping – The actual housekeeping itself was great. They did a very nice job of cleaning our room. However, we were typically out of the room by 9:15AM, not returning until 3PM or so, and multiple times, our room was not cleaned by then. Conclusion: I wouldn’t stay here again. I often bring my family to business oriented hotels, and we are very respectful of the other guests and do not disturb them. I typically find that hotels are welcoming of families and make us feel comfortable. I paid extra for lounge access, and I was really disappointed with that experience. Combine this with the strong, lingering scent in our room, the delayed housekeeping, and the misc charges on my room, and I’d just pick another place to stay.

I was really pleased that we booked this hotel. Yes it’s a typical chain, business type hotel but it was really well priced given some of the other hotels for the same dates and it was great in terms of cleanliness, service and location. It’s about a ten/fifteen minute walk to Las Ramblas and it’s a nice walk through some of the old town. The hotel has a really nice roof terrace bar and restaurant with a pool. It is a bit pricey mind with our water bill costing more than the alcohol at dinner. The rooms are really large, have good amenities and you get a good night sleep.

Crowne Plaza Barcelona was pretty decent considering this is my first time staying at a Crowne establishment. Stayed for 2 nights on my last leg of my European trip. Check in was super fast and the staff was friendly. Room was a nice size, come equip with the usually coffee, tea, water and small refrigerator. Bathroom was huge, come with tub and shower which was nice. Hotel has a rooftop bar to die for. It has a 360 degree view of Barcelona. After a long day of sightseeing I would head upstairs to the roof top bar and take in the city views with a glass of gin and tonic. The bar in the ground level was nice too but the roof was 100% better. The location of the hotel was perfect, a mall and train was 10 to 15 min walk and hop on and hop off bus stop was 5 min walk away. My reservation include breakfast which wasn't bad. Breakfast consist of the usually eggs, bacon, ham, pancakes, waffles, cereal and a array of pastries. They also had freshly squeeze orange juice which was delicious. Overall the hotel was pretty good for the price.

I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the room. Typically rooms in europe are rather small and bathrooms even smaller. I had a lovely well appointed room with king bed large desk, plenty of dresser and closet space, huge tv, outlets available where you need them. The bathroom was very large, with a bathtub and separate shower. Nice towels, good linens , comfortable bed. decor nice and modern. the a/c in the room was so quite i didnt even know it was on, that in itself is worth the money. upstairs on the top floor is a bar and lovely pool area with beautiful views of the city. the pool is very small but its nice for a dip and a cool off. the bar offers drinks and light bites, service is very friendly and efficient. it was one of my favorite places to hang out for an hour before dinner to just relax. located just off the main drag in a quite neighborhood easy access to metro walk in 5 mins, lots of tappas bars and restaurants located near by easy to walk to . overall very nice comfortable stay will definitely return.