Hilton Barcelona, Barcelona

...got a booking at the Hilton Barcelona and were able to breathe again.

First I think it's only fair to the hotel to say that one's experience of a hotel can be very different depending on the circumstances. Had I been there for a holiday, I might have rated it more highly than I did as a meeting venue - but even so, I really can't imagine I'd have ever chosen this hotel for a holiday.

===Location===

The ...
...As the other is called Hilton Diagonal Mar, just nodding when you recognise the word 'Diagonal' is not going to help you! You will need to be explicit.

The drive from the airport is about 30 minutes, depending on the traffic. The Hilton stands right on the Diagonal so the taxi will pull off the street onto the forecourt in front of the hotel. It's a tall, concrete and glass building - not particularly memorable, but nothing ugly.
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When my boss came up with the idea of holding a big training session for a bunch of colleagues, he threw in the suggestion that it should be 'somewhere creative', sent out the notification of the dates and then promptly flew off for three weeks holiday leaving the rest of us to try to interpret his vague instructions.

We went through a lot of turmoil. The trainer was determined to do it in Hamburg (yep, I agree, not a city that's exactly famous for setting the creative juices going) and then found, several weeks later, that the entire city was fully booked for some kind of trade show. By this point, we had only three or four weeks left to find an alternative.

He then set his assistant to work hunting down weird and wonderful hotels; everything from a Euro500 per night place in Rioja with a massive whirl of Frank Gehry metalwork slapped on top of it, to a bizarre place in Berlin where one of the rooms had two coffins instead of beds, and another had the bed suspended from the ceiling. Thankfully in all cases, none of these were available either. He and the boss then went through a couple of foolish weeks trying to negotiate a deal with the most expensive hotel in Barcelona (the hotel with the big gold fish outside) before a more sensible colleague pointed out that the August sales figures were so awful that we really couldn't get away with that and the rug was swiftly pulled out from under that plan. By this point, the invitees had all been told we'd be in Barcelona and thought we were playing games to keep the hotel secret - oh, if only that were so. Just nine days before the event, we still didn't have a hotel confirmation and then finally, we got a booking at the Hilton Barcelona and were able to breathe again.

First I think it's only fair to the hotel to say that one's experience of a hotel can be very different depending on the circumstances. Had I been there for a holiday, I might have rated it more highly than I did as a meeting venue - but even so, I really can't imagine I'd have ever chosen this hotel for a holiday.

Location

The first thing that's important to know when you arrive at Barcelona airport, is that there are two Hiltons in the city. One is a Euro20-25 taxi journey, the other quite possibly twice that amount. Both are on the famous Ave. Diagonal - almost at opposite ends. So my advice is to have the address written down and give it to the taxi driver if you want to avoid a very expensive mistake. As the other is called Hilton Diagonal Mar, just nodding when you recognise the word 'Diagonal' is not going to help you! You will need to be explicit.

The drive from the airport is about 30 minutes, depending on the traffic. The Hilton stands right on the Diagonal so the taxi will pull off the street onto the forecourt in front of the hotel. It's a tall, concrete and glass building - not particularly memorable, but nothing ugly.

First Impressions

When you enter the hotel through the rotating door (who can resist a rotating door?) the main foyer is filled with the bar area which stretches up as a high atrium rising. The bar is full of giant curvy purple sofas and bright orange lamps - it's a delicate balance between 'funky' and 'trying too hard' and doesn't really fit with the rest of the hotel. The reception is a long wooden desk off to the left hand side and the check-in staff were some of the friendliest, jokey, pleasant people I've come across in a five star hotel. Considering that my favourite hotel in Barcelona (the Gallery) has the world's most miserable and indifferent staff, this was quite a nice surprise.

After arranging for a porter to take some things down to the meeting rooms, I headed up to check out my room on the 7th floor.

The Room

When you leave the lifts, the corridors are quite jazzy with striped carpets, bold colours and giant mirrors. It does all look a touch dated but nothing too bad. The rooms though are disappointing and reminded me of a student bedroom decorated by IKEA. On the plus side, I was right at the end of the corridor and could just about see the towers and cranes of the Sagrada Familia on a clear day but the level of décor was well below what I'd expect for a Euro175 per night hotel room. Instead of a double bed, I had two singles - funny looking things with tube feet like an IKEA cheap bed. Each had a bedside table and on the bed I chose there was a long anglepoise style lamp above. There was a desk with another wall-mounted anglepoise, a TV suspended from the wall above a case stand with a drawer below. The trouble was that in order to use the case stand you risked banging your head on the TV every time. I can't comment on what the TV coverage was like because I didn't switch it on once during my stay - just spent a lot of time trying not to brain myself on the corners.

There was a large built-in wardrobe with an annoying light that glowed eerily. Inside was an iron and board, a minibar, a coffee and tea tray and a safe for valuable. The overall feel and finish of all the furniture was dated, unstylish and cheap-looking. It probably looked more interesting 10 years ago but I just wasn't very impressed and the room left a very bland image.

Other colleagues reported that some had received free bottles of mineral water in their rooms whilst others had been stung Euro4 a bottle for the same privilege. I was also told that wifi was being charged at the ridiculous rate of (if I remember correctly) Euro27 for 24 hours. What a rip off!

The Bathroom

Wow! Now this was a bit better than the rest of the room - lots of beautiful dark brown marble with gorgeous veiny quartz in it. I'm a sucker for a good bit of ornamental stone and this was good quality and very pretty. The sink surround was really large with lots of space for everything you could ever need in a bathroom and the mirror was enormous and there was a small cosmetics mirror as well. The bath, loo and bidet were all fairly standard and the toiletries were the standard (but very nice) Crabtree and Evelyn blue range. The marble for me lifted the bathroom out of the ordinary and certainly several levels above the rest of the room.

The Restaurant

I didn't have evening meals at the hotel as I'd booked different restaurants all over Barcelona (reviews inevitably will follow!) and I didn't use the restaurant for lunch either as we had our meals set out by the meeting rooms. However, I did go in for breakfast on two mornings and found a fairly standard spread containing a good mix of hot and cold. Service was fine although the restaurant was maybe a little bit dark for that time of day.

As a meeting venue?

Oh dear. Why is it that hotels can merrily charge you exorbitant rates for meeting rooms and put you in the basement with no natural light and walls like paper? The prices were shocking but I wouldn't have minded if the rooms had been better. We had one large meeting room - although I use the term large in the smallest sense - in which the lights repeatedly took it into their heads to turn on and off at random. This was amusing the first time my boss walked in and we were instantly plunged into the black - cue lots of comments on his role as the 'Prince of Darkness'.

On the second day the hotel had put another group in the room next to us and we could hear - if not understand - almost every word that was said. This was such a problem that the quietly spoken trainer struggled to be heard over the noise from the room next door.

In addition to the large meeting room, we had four smaller 'break-out' rooms which again had no natural light and were quite small. What I couldn't understand was that the public spaces around the rooms were enormous - so the only time we weren't cramped was when we were having our coffee and lunch breaks. The food at lunch was variable in quality but there was always plenty of it. However, the charges for coffee breaks were absolutely ridiculous - more than Euro10 per head.

To be fair, the venue was probably no worse than many meeting venues would be but it certainly wasn't excellent.

Other Facilities

There's a small outdoor area - a sort of terrace-garden type space - that can be accessed from the back of the bar. However, I don't think this was part of the hotel - it didn't seem to be in any way enclosed. According to the website there's a gym and a business centre but I didn't notice either.

Recommendation?

For a business meeting, I'd have to say that it was adequate, but nothing special and they could have tried harder. As a place to stay for fun, it's not the most central although the metro station nearby will whisk you into the centre of town in a lot less time than it would take to take a taxi and for a lot less money. However, it's OK and if you could get a deal on the price (let's be honest, Euro175 is ridiculous for B&B) it's not awful. However, it's also not good enough to be considered a 5-star in any other city in Europe. 

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