Aloft Strasbourg Etoile Review
Paul‘s 152nd Hotel Review for the
Aloft Strasbourg Étoile / France
Details:
Duration of stay: 2 nights / weekend trip
Check-in / Check-out:
Check-in Process: 
Check-out Process:
Concierge Service: no concierge
no concierge
Staff @ Front Desk:
Bonvoy recognition:
At Check-in:
In General:
Posting of points & nights:
Room / Bathroom:
Bed, quality of sleep:
Bathroom, Shower:
Room Atmosphere:
WiFi / Internet:
Housekeeping general:
Cleanliness:
Food & Beverage:
Breakfast:
Breakfast staff:
Bar:
Bar Staff:
Restaurant: N/A
Lounge: No Lounge
No Lounge
Paul‘s Mix:
Pool, Spa:
Hotel Location:
Mojito Rating 
:
:
General Customer Care:
Staff attitude, interaction and responsiveness:
Social media interaction:
—-
= bad, a lot of work needs to be done
=not good, you will be busy with corrections
= good & normal, nothing special
= high level, but the icing on the cake is missing
= topnotch, leave me here!
= Half a Point/sheep
—-
General Info:
The hotel is located very close to Strasbourg old town and everything can be easily explored by foot or with public transport.
There are a lot of restaurants and bars in the vicinity and a shopping mall is also right across the street.
The hotel has no own parking, should you be travelling with your own car, don't take the parking lot right behind the building. It is super expensive (60€ a day). Take the parking which is recommended by the hotel (20€ a day) even it is a little further away.
The Aloft Strasbourg Étoile is a very new hotel and it was opened just a couple of months ago.
It has a total of 123 rooms which are divided in 108 Aloft King Size rooms and 15 Aloft Family rooms.
The hotel in general is in top notch shape as it is new.
The Aloft vibe is all over and we love this fresh and free atmosphere. The interior is super modern, trendy, bright and colorful but still not to freaky.
Check-in:
The check-in was below any standard and no Marriott procedures followed at all. They agent was just standing there. No greetings no how was your journey, nothing. A simple "yes" just to get me to
the desk.
No interaction during the check-in process, no smiles, nothing.
Not to mention no Bonvoy recognition at all. (See below).
The only explanation was that only one bottle of water and one set of coffee and tea in the room is free of charge. If we want to have more, we have to pay for it.
This hotel does not use the Marriott and Bonvoy standard Roomkey envelope / sachet / holder what so ever.
They have own ones which are out of simple paper and it was already torn when we got the keys. So they are simply useless.
Check-out:
Check out was a little better but just because of Mr. Dominique. The only front office agent during both days who was smiling and did interact with the guests.
He asked if everything was okay and we gave him a true feedback. He apologized for our experience. Unfortunately it is/was already ro late.
Staff @ Frontdesk:
This hotel has a huge issue with the staff at the front desk.
We have seen them only unfriendly, not helpful, arrogant and as stoic robots.
Also after the disappointing first breakfast, the AC not working in the room and after the rather disappointing check in I wanted to talk to the GM or duty manager. No help at all with that. The
by himself called Duty Manager was simply useless and he seemed to have no clue at all. The look on his face spoke volumes about how much he didn't love his job. You don't want to talk to a
person like that because you know from the start that it won't help.
It seemed he did not even understand English. When I asked for the GM he did want to send me to the gym.
When we went to the front desk with the Housekeeping issue (see below under Housekeeping, the female agent gave us only a snippy answer and turned away.
Also when we checked out the "duty manager" was present at the front office. Mr. Dominique did the check out and we gave him the feedback. Do you really think the duty who listened to everything
would have jumped in? No, he had the same pissed of face as the day before and he didn't care at all.
How the heck can such a person be a duty manager.
Marriott Bonvoy Titanium Recognition:
During check-in, the agent did not once mention or did acknowledged our status.
She made us choose between points or breakfast as welcome amenity. That was basically it.
No "thanks for your loyalty" , no "I see your Bonvoy Number on file" simply no nothing.
She did not mention anything about the status or upgrade. I just know from different channels that with the corner room we were given the best available room. We booked originally an Aloft
king room and were given the Aloft King Corner room.
There was no welcome amenity in the room and there was no card or anything else.
Seems that this property including GM and / or management does not care about loyal customers.
All in all a very bad recognition as Titanium Elite Member.
This was my second stay as Titanium after being 6 years Ambassador and I can tell you already now that if that continues like that, they will definitely loose a loyal customer.
You get the feeling that the hotel is trying to save money in not adhearing to the standards.
Marriott Bonvoy goes simply down the drain.
Eligible nights and points:
Eligible nights and points were posted to the account 24 hours after checking out.
Concierge:
There is no concierge and we didn't want to ask the front desk for restaurant recommendations after the unprofessional check-in procedure.
Room / Suite:
The Aloft corner king room we got was stunning.
The room was equipped with a king bed, a wall mounted wardrobe, a little corner couch and table as well as a small cubicle with the fridge and coffee maker.
Unfortunately the fridge is very noisy.
The room itself was super modern, trendy with useful furniture and decoration. The atmosphere was very nice. The room was super bright as it had lots of floor to ceiling windows.
The view from the 8th floor over the city was simply amazing.
The air-conditioning did not work properly or not at all. There was no ventilation in the room.
The bed itself was good. The mattress is rather on the soft side. The bedding was good. The duvet were super comfy and the two pillows were comfortable too. One on the soft side and one on the firm side.
WiFi is without login in the entire hotel and it worked well.
Bathroom:
The bathroom was on the bigger side for an Aloft Hotel. It was held completely open (except for the toilet) and it was super modern and bright.
The vanity with the sink was open into the room. Very modern and very bright.
The shower was at the back and the toilet was separated with a farm sliding door from the rest of the bathroom.
The water pressure in the shower was a disaster.
At first I thought that the nozzles were clogged with limescale, as is often the case in hotels, and tried to clean them. Then I realized it was because of the water pressure.
I know that this property wants to go ecological to the max but if you restrict the water pressure in the room that water only comes out on every third to fourth shower nozzle (see picture) of
your rain forest shower than something is definitely wrong.
You can't shower here, you have to drop yourself clean!
The handheld shower head worked okay as much less nozzles and so the pressure was okay.
Housekeeping:
After the first night at 15:30 local time the room still wasn't cleaned when we got back.
When asking the front desk the answer was: they have time until 17:00. You have to wait. And she said it again in such an arrogant unfriendly manner.
It seems they still have a general problem with cleaning. At 16:00 Housekeeping finally came up to the 8th floor.
But... the room was super clean as were the public areas.
It was even so clean that the cleaning staff was cleaning around you whilst breakfast.
F&B outlets/ Lounge:
The concept of Aloft Hotels is that they all provide a W XYZ Bar for drinks and food as well as a re-fuel restaurant for breakfast.
W XYZ Bar:
We had a few drinks at the bar but didn't try their food as we went outside for dinner.
The drinks were super good on both nights and the evening staff was amazing. Super friendly, chatting and helpful. You could see that the bar staff were professionals and knew what they were
doing.
Please have a look at the menu pictures of the W XYZ.
The bar and restaurant has actually a very well thought promotion running to keep Bonvoy Members in the property.
If you spend less than 25€, 250 points will be credited to your Bonvoy account. If you spend between 25€ and 50€, then 500 points will be credited and if you spend more than 50€ at the bar, then
additional 1000 points will be credited to the account.
From Thursday on they have DJ's every night and on Saturday night they had a live band playing.
The evening staff at the bar is absolutely amazing and offers a phantastic service. They are simply on a higher service level than any other department in this hotel. They really have 4 Star
Service level.
All of them go above and beyond for their customers and go extra mile. A big thank you to them as they pulled out the service disaster of the other lousy departments.
Re-fuel Restaurant:
At Re-fuel the Hotel offers breakfast. I don't even want to call it buffet as it is one of the worst ones I have seen in a Marriott property. The Aloft Strasbourg Étoile tries to win the price
for the cheapest breakfast buffet of a 4-Star Hotel.
And you know what, they are going to win it.
Eating breakfast here has the atmosphere of a train station waiting hall, you are sitting together with the hoover, the cleaning trolley, the cleaning lady and an entire restaurant with dirty
tables! (see pictureas). In addition the breakfast buffet is worse in quantity and quality than the one of a YMCA.
The buffet is set up in a plywood shed-like cube. It's actually not even a real buffet. I have never seen such a small selection. Every Moxy hotel we've stayed at had a better buffet.
Adding to the above it had an extremely poor quality of the products.
The orange juice is pure colored water and the drink has very little to do with juice. There was no fresh fruit except for an already fermenting fruit salad. The selection of cheese and cold cuts
was minimal. The hot dishes were all cold because they weren't warmed. The scrambled eggs and the second egg dish were cold, watery and completely unseasoned.
Croissant and pain au chocolat were dry like the Sahara desert and beside a baguette there was no other bread.
Seriously, we are in France and no real croissants are served?
You can press the button for cafe au lait, cappuccino or Latte on the coffeemachine but if you think they would use milk is fooled. They use milk powder instead. Well one of the machines wasn't
working properly so instead of the "milk" only water came out.
The Re-fuel restaurant has only 4 tables and some bar space. So everyone walked over on the other side of the lobby to the W XYZ bar/restaurant.
Apparently you shouldn't be sitting there as during our stay they were cleaning the restaurant from the night before.
No this can not be done before or after breakfast it has to be done during breakfast. So they hooover, clean and you sort of have to lift your legs like at home when the cleaning lady wants to
wet clean the floor.
In addition all tables were full with dirty breakfast dishes as no one is clearing the tables on this side. One single poor guy is running around like a headless chicken to clean and the front
office staff is standing next to the breakfast area with crossed arms and yawning instead of helping their colleagues with clearing tables.
As I said before, this was the worst breakfast I have ever had in a Marriott property and it is a shame to offer something like this at an Aloft Hotel.
Either the GM or owner is trying to safe money with the breakfast as everything served is super low quality.
Staff at breakfast was a disaster. Let's call them the "they don't know what they do" team. Well that is most likely because the poor 2 people can not cope with the workload.
One member was running around and trying to cope with the amount of dirty dishes to clear and tidy the tables.
Then there was a young lady which most probably has never ever worked in service before. She refilled the clean cups and glasses by grabbing them by the bezel and fingerprint them where you
put your mouth. Discusting and a pure no go for a 4-Star international chain hotel.
They all need desperate training at breakfast.
On the second day at least the staff was trying to offer some minimal customer service. The buffet was exactly the same.
Executive Lounge:
No Lounge at Aloft Hotels
Pool / Spa / Gym:
The hotel has a small but good and well equipped gym on the 1st floor.
No pool or Spa available.
Social Media:
Social media is rather active at this property during weekdays.
They post regularly on Facebook and Instagram and also interact with the followers but...
The social media team has the same arrogance as the hotel team.
They contacted me privately and asked for feedback. (see pictures) I did give them the full review which you can also see here. Instead of saying sorry, thanks for the honest feedback and
we will share it with the departments, they showed exactly the same arrogance and ignorance as most of the team in the hotel.
They simply deleted anything they could.
They deleted all tags on Instagram for the specific hotel page #aloft_strasbourg_etoile and for the Franchise Company @Naos Hotel Groupe from the posts with negative comments and on
the final review.
The positive posts were left with the tags.
And I have never heared back from them. If that is their feedback handling. Good night customer service.
To bad that they don't know how social media works.....
Summary:
All in all we would not recommend the Aloft Strasbourg Étoile hotel, based on the experiences we have made over the last 2 days/nights.
It isn't enough to offer a nice and modern room.
The have a top hard product but a lousy soft product.
Front desk is a disaster, breakfast was the worst we ever had in a Marriott property and in general (except the bar staff) the staff has no idea what they do or do it with such an aversion that
you feel unwelcome.
In addition Marriott Bonvoy Elite guests are not really honered and we just found out, should you book on points, that the Aloft
charges 31000 points whilst the Autograph Collection is only 3000 points higher with 34000 points.
We liked the city and we will come back but for sure we will stay at the Autograph Collection Hotel as the other 2 Marriotts (AC & Fairfield) have the same management and ownership as the
Aloft. So we do not expect anything better there.
Notes:
- Paul the Sheep does not get any benefits from the Hotels/Airlines etc.
- Paul will always pay for the services in order to be able to rate freely and truly about the experiences.
-If you are interested in more details, please send us a private message and I will be happy to share more information and pictures.