Long detailed review because this could be an extremely impressive Airbnb but in its current state it is not.
View: Seven stars, this apartment might have one of the best views of the Eiffel tower in the whole city. As the building is right across the Seine from the tower, you have an unobstructed view from top to bottom, simply spectacular. Sunrise with the tower, sunset with the tower. I browsed Airbnb for months and couldn’t find any other Airbnb with a view even close to it. I gathered there are only five buildings in Paris with this view of the tower and only one Airbnb is located in those buildings.
Location: Five stars. 20-minute walk to Arc de Triomphe, Invalides, Place de la Concorde, on and on.
Building: Four stars, nice lobby and inner patio, well maintained, nice address.
Apartment size and layout: four stars. 7th floor, efficient layout, very good space (for Paris) for three of us.
Kitchen: three and a half stars. Seems recently remodeled, new refrigerator, really good dishwasher. Good Nespresso coffee machine but the water tank was so extremely dirty I couldn’t use it. I tried to clean it, couldn’t, asked the host to change the tank, never did.
It has most dinnerware and utensils, but incredibly enough for Paris, it didn’t have a corkscrew. Awesome realization when you are dying to open your newly acquired French wine…
Bedroom: Three and a half stars. Standard Parisian size bedroom and closet.
Bathroom: One star. It’s dated, at least three decades since last renovation. What is worse: dirty, there’s mold around the bath tub, every single space between tiles is stained. The toilet needs an urgent replacement. No matter how much toilet cleaner you put on this thing, it never looses the smell from who knows how many previous guests. Let me put it this way, this toilet makes you long for the restrooms at CDG airport. My wife was so disgusted she would not stay at this apartment again unless the bathroom is renovated.
The host: Two stars. The place is hosted by some apartment management company. So, from the get go you lose the personal touch of a real owner. You get scripted messages and treatment before, during, and after the stay.
If you check in after 19:00 you have to pick up the keys from the management company office close to L’arc de Triomphe. Not ideal. Once we arrived at the apartment, the fob key to the building entrance didn’t work. We called the host who gave us a code to punch in the call box. The faulty fob was never replaced so we had to use the code every time.
Many reviews complain about the after 19:00 check in, still the host has not been bothered to address the inconvenience. Make the check in all digital, use one of the plenty easy available motorbike delivery apps to deliver the keys, put a lockbox, just figure it out. Don’t wait for your guests to figure it out for you and keep accumulating bad comments about it.
When we arrived the internet was not working, the tv wasn’t working either. I had to troubleshoot it myself and found the cable in the cable outlet in the living room was all shredded so I had to DIY a solution.
Go through a simple check list before every new guest:
Fob working
Internet working
Tv working
Toilet cleaned
Apartment Vacuumed
Dusted
Corkscrew
Coffee machine cleaned and working
Etc.
There are a couple of closets full of old worn out items and broken vacuum cleaners, brooms, painting supplies in complete disorder, tidy them up or lock them out. It is true what other reviewers mentioned, there are mouse traps under the kitchen sink. All these just add to the general sense of uncleanliness and disrepair.
I'm not opposed to outsourcing the hosting, but at least use a company that doesn’t lower the overall quality of what could otherwise be one of the best Airbnbs in Paris.