First of all, I want to say that the hotel is indeed a good location, somewhat quiet, etc. However, I am giving 1 star for a couple of reasons.
1. Bed bugs. I would've thought a hotel like this would do a better job of inspecting their furniture before and after their guests leave. We ended up finding like over 4 of them hidden in the seams of the mattress frame. My partner got bit over 7 or 8 times. I'm now paranoid for all future hotels I stay in and will be checking all furniture in the future.
2. And now the meat of the complaint, how the situation was handled by management. When my partner got up in the middle of the night due to itchy bites, we saw a bed bug fall off of her and onto the bed. We took pictures of it and the blood stains on the sheets, which we were pretty sure were already there. That night we brought it up to the front desk clerk, and he gave us a new room and told us they'll investigate in the morning. When it was morning, we asked the day shift clerk, Yosef, about it and he said that they found nothing and immediately denied that it was a bed bug when it obviously was. We double checked images on google and I even resorted to uploading the images we took to AI. What does he want? A scientist to confirm? We argued with him and he kept on denying the facts. He said that the bug was too big (the photo was zoomed in) and that there was just one bug (honestly fair I guess). He said it was some tree bug lol. He then try to convince us that we could've brought the bug over in a pretty condescending manner. It's as if we were being discriminated as Americans (though I get it). He also said if this was such a problem, we can pack our bags and go somewhere else. My partner spoke Spanish and when she translated to me that Yosef was denying our claims, I said "so he's not believing that it's a bed bug?" out loud. Yosef immediately directed us to the breakfast area so that other people won't hear us. It was clear that he prioritized the hotel's reputation than its guests. After we ate breakfast, we went to talk to him again. He proposed that we put our luggage on our beds in our new room to see if bugs come out. I thought this idea was absolutely ridiculous, but we didn't go through with it. Looking back on it now, that probably would've had the bed bugs climb into our luggage. I really wasn't convinced that it was our fault for bringing in the bed bugs, so when we went back to the room to get our luggage to move into the new room, we went to the extent of flipping the bed frame over. We found over 4 more bed bugs hidden in the seams of the frame. We even caught one in a glass cup. We came back to Yosef with more evidence and he started to panic. He grabbed a can of insecticide and we came back to the room with him. When he saw the bugs, it was then that it seemed to dawn on him that these were indeed bed bugs and that it's the hotel's fault for letting this infestation go this far. He then proceeded to spray the insecticide on the wheels of our luggage. Not once that he apologized for all of the denial and the unprofessionalism. In terms of compensation, the hotel washed our clothes and let us stay in the new room. In between all of this, was a lot of miscommunication such as him wanting us to go back to stay in the original room and that they would change the bed sheets but didn't and changed the new room's bedsheets instead. I'll spare the details of that, but that was a lot of back and forth, nonproductive, and stressful.
I am incredibly surprised that a hotel with a lot of good reviews ended up being a terrible experience. I'm typically forgiving, but man, what a ridiculous and stressful time. If anyone has legal experience in Spain/EU, please let me know if we can do anything. I really wanted to get this over with so we can enjoy the rest of our vacation, so I didn't look into it too much. This was our first impression of Madrid. But thankfully the rest of Madrid was amazing with its rich culture and terrific people. I would come back again, just not to this hotel. Stay away. read more