Gallery Park Hotel & SPA, a Châteaux & Hôtels Collection

DISCLAIMER : all critics and comments are from my own lived experience and have no link to any advertising or paid comment. This stay is not our first stay in a 5 star hotel and based on our own experiences so what could have been a 5 star stay clearly has been missed . The Gallery Park Hotel is a 5 star hôtel ideally located some hundred meters from the old center and the « art nouveau » district. It had on the « paper » all the luxurious elements you could expect from the 5 star hotel : spa, awesome rooms, sport room, swimming pool, 24 hour services , Michelin starred level restaurant and so on. I will not talk here about Riga which is a fabulous city. Nicely welcomed by the driver , we arrived quickly at the hotel in our outdated serviced Mercedes (one of the most expensive transfer per kilometer btw). Though i asked in advance to prefill any necessary papers because arriving in the middle of the night and get access to our room as soon as possible , we had to do a full checkin , filling and signing papers even for children. Very long process which , I am quite sure of that, could have been either anticipated or maybe postponed on the day after We ve been perfectly shown to our family room which has a (very) high ceiling with old (very) dusty curtains around the windows Bedding was excellent and road noise isolation from the window perfect (2 main roads passing by), but which was clearly not the case from the inside isolation : you could hear the guests from the upper level talk and walk in their room, and any noises from the hallway , especially the violent auto closing door system , was clearly heard We learned meanwhile our stay that Christmas period is the OFF season in Riga so in some way luckily for us, we haven t had to suffer from other guests as we actually saw very very few The bathrooms were great and spacious with heating floor, amenities were of good quality, but the slippers were really low cost Breakfast was just standard but clearly not of a 5 star hotel, and i must say that having ordered once the « a la carte »eggs and sausages , i had never seen such pityful sausages. It never changed from day 1 to day 5. We tested once the « in room dining » but had to accommodate ourselves with what the hotel had in store, and it wasn’t much (they didn’t even have beer...) This makes me come to the hotel restaurant which at that period of the year was actually closed ! Clearly a big disappointment as we this was also one of our reason to stay at this hotel, and we learned that just some days before our arrival so too late to change (booking was made months ago) Talking of the booking process, i did it by direct chat with the hotel from their website with full and clear informations, this was a real plus that, by that time, was having me expecting having a marvelous stay Coming to the hotel other specificities, the spa was just dead of any activity, and the sport room was composed actually of just 3 cardio machines (in a room big enough for 20 but maybe it s used for other activities when there is life in the hotel) The swimming pool was nice and the atmosphere really relaxing, but the room temperature was just freezing and you couldn’t stay too long on the not comfortable benches. The sauna had to be switched on by ourselves every time we came , which meant that we couldn’t enjoy it as a sauna must be enjoyed (hot) Finally the balneo shower could not be accessed as the glass door was blocked on the floor. Staff was servicing but very seldom (many thanks to the one we met); they made us alas sometimes more think of «night guards» than a huge 5 star hotel team ; kind of «Shining» spirit where you just never meet anyone. However, any request was quickly and efficiently answered even with such a small team. Room cleaning was also of good quality Alas for the hotel it has really aged (even the starred logo on the street is broken) and it needs deep renovations to be able to still compete with same level hotels, and clearly : better close on this period of the year than offering mid to low level quality

Well once you enter the hotel and take a look at the reception the feeling of grandeur overwhelms you. This feeling is quite short-lived and soon it's overcome with shoddy service and very ordinary rooms. The hotel furniture is quite dated and while the hotel boasts of 5 star accommodation and service and charges appropriately for it, I would still say it's nothing more than a 3.5 star hotel. Look at the pictures and make your own opinion.