The hotel is situated in one of the nicer parts of Bucharest, in a quiet area and yet not to far away from the center.
The room we had was very nice, and maybe one of the nicest hotel rooms I which I have ever stayed. The furniture, although already a couple of years old has been chosen with a lot of taste, and the room had a very nice flair. The bathroom was quite formidable for a 4 star hotel.
This could well have been the perfect hotel, and yet, it is the details that ruins a little bit the nice setting.
First of all, there is no elevator in the room. Since it probably is an old house, this by itself should not be seen as a negative point. However someone asking you or care about helping to carry the luggage to the third floor can and has to be expected from such a hotel. This was not the case.
According to the hotel, they have a parking for hotel guests. Since the reception did not inform us about this service, we asked a guy apparently working for „hanging around“ in front of the hotel about the parking. In fact, hotel guests can use the parking in front of the hotel (which does not belong to the hotel, but which is public) and which is blocked by chairs or other objects by this guard for hotel guests. He advised us to look for some parking in the street. Our impression was that a generous tip could have helped to have one of these parkings… Unfortunately, one of the parkings was also permanently bloocked by a car belonging to the hotel.
The hotel also announces on ist website that it has a spa area - neither hotel information in the room, nor the employee at the reception informed us about this hotel facility.
The hotel also advertises with a concierge service – we tried to get information about the opening hours of the People’s Palace (not really an uncommon place to visit when you are in Bucharest) and got nothing sensible and even wrong information. We also tried to ask about a nice restaurant, but again we only received a smile and the
Finally, the quality of the breakfast was average at best.
Rooms were very clean (as long as you do not take to close of a look under the bed or other furniture).
The hotel seems to employ a great number of personnel, many of them don’t seem to know what to do. All personnel was very friendly and tried to be helpful. Obviously, they seem to lack any form of training or experience, and I guess it is mainly management that has to be blamed for problems described above.
It is really a pity, because Residence Olivier is really a nice hotel, it has been put a lot of care and attention to details in the rooms’ furniture, and yet it seems to be very badly managed. The owners of the hotel should think about replacing management if they don’t want the hotel to be further run down.
