When you first look at this Airbnb listing, you may think "Oh wow, great location, a view of the Eiffel Tower, AND it's so cheap. Let's do it." We stayed 3 nights in early August 2022, and it was pretty miserable.
The Host
Marie is the owner of this Airbnb, but the primary point of contact was a "concierge" who works for HostnFly. They're fine, they write solid English (or Airbnb's translations were solid) but they manage multiple properties at once, so you definitely won't receive their full attention. Before our stay, they were very communicative and helpful in figuring out what's nearby. During our stay, in which we had problems, they were practically a ghost who ignored our messages and only sent canned responses regarding the check out process.
The Check-in/Check-out process
What's left out of the listing (but is mentioned in the reviews) is that the check-in & check-out process is tedious. We picked up & dropped off the keys at a separate location which was a 10-minute walk from the actual property. It seemed fine in theory, but it was definitely burdensome and annoying when we were walking with our bags through the summer heat while trying to navigate the Parisian cobblestone streets. The specific locations & directions were provided a few days before our actual stay, so we couldn't really plan for it far in advance. We weren't allowed to keep our bags at the property after check-out. We ended up using Nannybag and paying €20 to store our bags at a store near the key dropoff location for just a few hours.
The Airbnb
The directions on how to enter/exit the building aren't clear. To enter the outer door, you type the keycode given to you in your check-in instructions and push hard on the door. To enter the inner door, you touch the fob on your keys to the panel (disregard the "beeps" in the instructions, they were confusing) and pull on the door. To exit the inner door, you first press the switch which is located under the handrail to the stairs. To exit the outer door, you first press the switch which is located to the right of the door.
Here's our experience with the actual Airbnb unit:
- It's 24 square meters (79 square feet). It's not a big space. The bathroom is bigger than you'd expect, which is great, but it also means the actual living area is closer to 18 square meters (59 square feet).
- It's a sofa bed. It's not comfortable. The pillows aren't supportive. The extra pillows in the bathroom closet don't have covers, and so are probably not sanitary to use. The extra sheets don't give any indication that they were washed recently. We kept the sofa bed open at all times, which also drastically reduced the actual living area of the space (and we had to move the bed over a bit to make it so that the bathroom door could open & close without hitting the bed).
- The view of the Eiffel Tower was cool for a grand total of 10 minutes. After that, the problems of the Airbnb were more prominent.
- In the summer heat, this place is a sauna. It's miserably hot. The host doesn't provide a fan or any way of cooling down the area. We asked the concierge about buying & being reimbursed for a fan (which would've cost the host €25), to which they pointed out that the listing doesn't include a fan as an amenity and ignored our further messages. We ended up soaking a bath towel with water every night and draping it over ourselves. On our first night, we didn't open the windows because we thought it'd let bugs in. On the second night, we opened the windows because we were willing to deal with the bugs. On the third morning, we "woke" up with no sleep and bugs. To give you a sense of how hot it was, standing outside the front door of the building was cooler. We actively avoided our Airbnb at all costs just to not have to deal with the heat.
- There's bugs -- ants & silverfish to be precise. They introduced themselves soon after we set our bags down, invited their friends when we left the windows open, and stayed for the remainder of our stay. I cleaned them up with the dish sponge every 30 minutes. I complained about them on our second night (about 24 hours after arrival, after also having asked for a fan reimbursement) and never received an acknowledgement or response about it.
- The bathroom is solid
- There's a laundromat right around the corner
- The elevator is just fine. A little screechy, but it got the job done.
- The front door of the unit is directly across from the elevator door. We're relatively small of stature, but it was still squishy to try to exit the elevator and enter the unit.
In hindsight, we would've been much better off paying more to stay at a hotel or a better unit. The location is nice, but it's not worth the mental and physical anguish that comes with the lack of communication from the concierge, the check-in & check-out process, and the unit itself.