The flat is perfectly situated. I loved the 19th arrondissement, it is close to the center, but not very touristy, and has a lot to offer in itself. Don’t miss a night’s stroll along the Bassin to the Parc de la Villette, or a visit to the Parc de Buttes-Chaumont. There’s a complete kitchen with everything you’ll need. Other than one comment said, the Wifi is perfect, the connection info came by airbnb message. Expect loud and animated conversations from the bar below, though. We didn’t mind it, but it’s definitely not for the noise-sensitive.
Cleanliness: The shower has too much mold, and most of the cups in the kitchen were not cleaned wery well or not at all. The kitchen and fridge is filled with half-used packs of butter, soy milk, pasta and loads of other stuff, and there’s eggs that expired four weeks ago. So I recommend Elodie either takes care that things are cleared out *or* (which I’d prefer from a sustainability viewpoint) clearly states what stuff guests can use and what not, and what to do with leftovers.
Despite these problems, I would have loved to revisit and recommend this apartment, but I can’t. Here’s why.
Elodie outsourced the management to the Hostnfly service, all “her” messages are from some anonymous person from their staff. Hostnfly, on the other hand, outsourced the key management to another service, called KeyNest. They send you to some hotel in a 5-minute walking distance from the flat to pick up the key. No problem, if the key would have been there. It wasn’t in our case. The hotel manager told us it was at some other key depot, a phone shop close to Montmartre, at least a half-hour trip away by Metro. Hostnfly didn’t react in time to my message (you don’t get a phone number from them), so after waiting for half an hour we went there, only to be told that it wasn’t there either. By then, hostnfly had messaged me that the key was in fact at the original depot, even though I had sent them a screenshot of the hotel manager’s keyNest machine showing that he was unable to find it with our number. Luckily, we decided to hang around at the phone shop until Hostnfly had managed to speak to the keyNest people. As they seem to be unable to call the depot staff themselves, I had to hand over *my* phone to the phone shop staff, so that in the end they made them give me the “correct” key there, only that back at the apartment it turns out it was the wrong key. At this time, they did what they should have done in the first place, send some messenger with the correct key directly to the apartment. All this mess cost us a lot of nerves and what could have been a great first afternoon in Paris. Apart from loads of apologies, we were not offered any compensation.
I understand the market logic underlying the emergence of services like KeyNest and Hostnfly, and I understand why Elodie happily outsources her duties as a host to them. The Hostnfly lady was nice, apologetic and overall tried to be helpful, so I blame mostly the constellation that is prone to break down if something goes wrong. There’s too many parties involved and the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. The hotel manager does not have a phone number to investigate for you (at least he offered to leave our luggage with him, so +1 for Hotel des Buttes Chaumont), and Hostnfly cannot help you directly without involving Keynest, who in turn, seem to be unable to speak directly to their depot partners. Apart from that, I doubt that the way Hostnfly requires you to upload passport scans to their site complies with European data protection laws. I couldn’t find any info why they require the scans and how they handle the data.
Overall, I don’t intend to book another airbnb which is not managed by the owners themselves, even if I fear that these will become increasingly rare, particularly in top destinations like Paris.