The Universe Flat hotel is located on a quiet side street 2-3 blocks away al the action on the Paulista avenue. Very close to the MASP Trianon subway station. There are no stores or shops directly around the hotel. The hotel is a former apartment building, and if you set your mindset to "This is my personal apartment building on a quiet residential side street of Sao Paulo", instead of wishing for a luxury hotel, then you will enjoy your stay. They have a very nice breakfast buffet, and the building and rooms (apartments!) are nicely decorated and clean. I don't like the room numbering system (ex: room #1207 is located on the 2nd floor, but you must take the elevator to the right of the front desk to your room. If you take the elevator to the left of the front desk to the 2nd floor, you won't have access to room #1207 which is on the 2nd floor!) Why aren't rooms (for example) on the 6th floor, numbered 601, 602, 603, etc? It can be confusing. The pool and workout room are small, but nice. Yesterday, I was kicked out of the "business center" (just a desk with a computer and internet) while I was actually doing business, because the hotel staff member said some meetings were going on in nearby meeting rooms. And?? Anyway, the employees at the hotel are very nice although some front desk agents' English is limited. I've stayed twice and enjoyed my rooms, and the large equipped kitchenette's that come in the rooms are nice. Plastic water glasses should be replaced with glass, though. And my TV had cable, but no English stations. Everything was in Portuguese. The location of the hotel, is really great. You are in short walking distance to stores, restaurants, museums, clubs, etc.

We stayed here for 10 weeks during the time we were looking for an apartment in Sao Paulo. You will find no service at all in this hotel. Only 1 person speaks English at the reception and she is not there very often. We got an invoice everytime our bill exceeded 500 Reais and even they blocked our keycard until we paid the amount. The internet in the room has problems almost every day, the WIFI in the lobby as well. They charged us unspecified "frigobar" with 12 Reais twice, which we never consumed. There is no parking included, but you can get a parking space for 10 Reais per day in the garage BUT you have to go to the reception every day and get the confirmation that you are staying in the hotel or the unfriendly guys in the garage won´t give you this "special price" - to present them your keycard is not enough. Breakfast is included but it is exactly the same every day. There is no security at all at the entrance. When we came home late at night they always let us in without asking. Nobody at the reception desk would ever greet one single guest. The carpet in our room was at least 10 years old and very dirty - you cannot walk on it barefoot. I cannot recommend this hotel at all!!!

My wife and I stayed here for 10 days for her MBA classes and some sight seeing and although the hotel was OK, it is not in a great area. Not many of the front staff speak English and we actually had our laptop bag with her books stolen on the last day before we left in the lobby dining area in front of staff and other guests! A group of men in suits took our bag in a mere 15 seconds and walked out without incident! They managed to waltz to the back of the lobby and the security cameras were no deterrent. Afterwards, the hotel GM was not very helpful and thank god we had a coodinator with us to help translate. She managed to have the hotel pay for our taxi to the police station, but whn we checked out, they charged us fees for the cabs! They do not have any security in the lobby at all and they were not reactive at all! The WiFi internet stopped working after a few days and was a hotel wide problem and although there was free breakfast every morning as is the norm, it was not worth the price for the hotel. This incident turned what was an average stay into a very poor experience. You have to keep going down to pay after every 500 reals (every 2-3 days) and the lunch takes FOREVER... the staff is not service oriented or attentive at all. We will never come back to this hotel!

unfortunately they allow to smoke cigars, pipes and any sort of bloody smokes - as I was informed by Roberto, receptionist