I recently stayed at the Minerve Hotel as it was the location of a conference I was attending as a final part of my Master's degree in business. The hotel's website can be found at: http://www.hotel-paris-minerve.com/English/Main.htm . I will first describe the hotel and some of its facilities, and later my experience there.

The hotel is conveniently located less than 4 blocks from a number of important Paris landmarks, and within 2 blocks of 3 different Metro stations, providing convenient access to the rest of the city. Situated in the heart of the Latin Quarter , only 2 blocks from the Pantheon and less than 4 from Notre-Dame Cathedral, it certainly boasts a convenient, central location. The hotel also offered conference space, which seemed to be valuable for our meetings. While the hotel's website states the availability of Wi-Fi internet, I found I was unable to connect to that service.

My room, a single room, overlooked the hotel's interior patio. Like many buildings in older parts of many European cities, the building which the Minerve Hotel occupies is shoehorned in between the buildings to the left and to the right. It seemed that my room had been shoehorned in as well. One corner of my room was made up by the outside wall of the main staircase. A tiny closet was in another corner, while the bed occupied almost all of the rest of the room.

While they did provide cable television (including many French and German stations, along with CNN Europe) at no additional charge, the set was mounted on the wall about 6 feet high, so that when I wasn't banging my head against it, I was craning my neck to see the picture while lying down. The bathroom was what a real estate agent would describe as "cozy". It consisted of a sink and toilet, along with a shower stall that couldn't have been more than 20 inches by 20 inches. Standing at an angle in the shower, I almost had enough room, but I could pretty much forget about the soap if it was dropped.

The Hotel offered breakfast every morning, which consisted of an assortment of sample-sized packages, coffee, bread, a croissant, and orange juice. While this was a reasonable value for 8 Euros (at least compared to other offerings in the neighborhood), I found out at check-out time that I was still required to pay for the 2 days I didn't eat breakfast there.

Now, about my experience there. The Minerve Hotel advertises itself as a 3 star hotel (based on a rating by the French Ministry of Tourism), but it is obvious that this hasn't always been the case from looking at their sign. The sign has two stars on the bottom, while a third has been added after the fact in between. The two bottom stars lit up at night. The third did not.

My first inkling of a problem was when I got an email from my professor the Monday before departure that the Minerve wouldn't, after all, have a room for me on the day I arrived. They very generously arranged a room at a "sister" hotel 2 blocks away for a rate of about $55 more per night. This repeated itself on the last night, as they didn't have a room then, either, and again sent me to the sister hotel. While there was also no hot water on the last morning, they explained this was due to the boiler exploding at 4:30 that morning, and I do not fault them for it.

The reservation problems continued when we found out on the third day of the conference that they had also given away the conference room! While they did make arrangements for us to use a room at the Hotel Familia next door, it was still very inconvenient.

While part of the experience may stem from France's 35-hour work week and the fact that it was almost impossible to speak to the same person twice while arranging the trip, the Minerve definitely needs to make a serious investment in its reservations system to see that they don't have these kind of double booking problems. The European Union recently passed a law that requires airlines to reimburse double-booked passengers somewhere along the lines of $1000. If only it was the same for hotels.

Recommended: No