On my 2nd trip to Paris, I booked the Hotel Media before I'd read the reviews on Trip Advisor. Obviously once I read the reviews I was horrified but at that point, every other hotel in my price range was fully booked and there are no refunds so I decided to be brave and give it a try. As a solo-traveller I've stayed in hostels and hotels of varying classes so I hoped that maybe it wouldn't be as bad as everyone had said. However, just to be careful I brought my own sheet with me... thank goodness!
The room was dreadful. Seriously, the WORST room I have ever had the misfortune of sleeping in. For any Americans reading this, it makes Motel 6 look like a 5* hotel. The room is very small with holes and stains in the carpet and the room in general is in a state of disrepair. The furniture looked like something out of a crack house. No exaggeration. I pulled back the sheets on the bed and to my horror discovered a USED BANDAID and what appeared to be pubic hairs. I stripped the bed down to the fitted sheet (tried to take that off too but the mattress underneath was so stained that I couldn't bear to leave it uncovered) and used my sheet to sort of sleep in a cocoon.
In the morning when I was ready for a shower, I stepped on the bathroom floor and found it sticky *shudder*. The toilet was stained as was the tub. It was so bad that I just washed up and left as quickly as I could. Unfortunately the nightmare did not end there. I went downstairs to check out and the man at the check in desk (younger than the same man who does the evening check in) kept staring at me while I checked my email. It was extremely creepy and uncomfortable. He asked me what I was doing in Paris and when I told him that I was sightseeing for the day he told me that I should let him take me on his motorcycle and when I politely declined he insisted and then became angry when I repeatedly said no thank you. At this point he just stared at me and honestly as a young woman in a foreign city on my own, I felt extremely uncomfortable. Keep in mind that I have travelled alone many times and am not naive... one thing any female backpacker knows is that she has to keep her guard up when out of her comfort zone and this is the first time that I felt genuinely uncomfortable and somewhat afraid.
This hotel is just terrible. The previous hotel I stayed at was the Hotel Lorette Opera. It's clean, friendly, nicely decorated and close to the Moulin Rouge. Also when I visited there when I was 21 the man at the check in desk was kind of enough to call my room each night to make sure that I'd made it back safely since it was my first time in Paris. Hotel Media could learn a lot from Hotel Lorette Opera. Places like Hotel Media give Paris, an otherwise amazing and beautiful city, a very bad name!!
Save your money! Go somewhere else!
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC