Hotel Balmes, a member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts

Do not recommend this hotel at all. Rooms are falsely advertised - not wheelchair accessible at all. The pool is a joke - very small, no towels at the poolside. None of my room requests were met despite booking over a month in advance. I found hair in my towels, the tub didn't drain, and I didn't even have enough towels in my room for a basic shower. The room smelt like stale fridge air, I faced a wall from my window, and the cleaning staff tried to unlock and enter my room 2x during my 1 night stay. I voiced these concerns to staff and nothing was done to make this better. I asked for a partial refund, and nothing was provided. I will never be coming back here, and future travelers shouldn't either. Review edited to reply to the hotels false statements below: I did not request a bed larger than what was booked. I requested that if there happened to be a taller bed option available, that this would be appreciated, as I am very tall, but if there was extra costs associated with that, then not to worry about it. I requested a quiet room on an upper floor due to noise from the street and city views because it was my last night in the country. Your room description does not state the room booked was lower floors only (perhaps as another tip, you should include this in your description too), and your staff confirmed this was not a lower floor only situation when your staff moved me to 6th floor minutes after check in. I went to the 2nd floor room initially assigned; your “city views” had me facing a tree, which had branches touching my window and the tree blocked the entire view (which wasn’t a city view at all - I faced another run down looking building across the street), and the traffic below was very loud. The room was barely able to accommodate my carry on sized suitcase - you cannot claim your rooms are accessible if I can’t even walk through the door easily with this. A wheelchair wouldn’t have a hope of fitting through that door. I didn’t think I needed to request accessibility friendly in order to enter my room with a basic suitcase (but apparently future guests should make sure they request accessibility friendly if you want to get into your room with your suitcase). I addressed the housekeeping staff trying to unlock my room to staff during my stay; that shouldn’t have even had to be addressed - at 4:30 and 5pm, there is NO reason for them to be entering a guests room; this is well past standard cleaning times and past check in time. I asked the front desk for towels for the “rooftop” aka ground level pool (yet another falsely advertised statement) and received none (it wasn’t a matter of them “not being big enough” for my liking - they just weren’t there at all). I alerted staff of my tub not draining x2 actually and nothing was done about it (once at the very start of my stay, then again later in the night). I informed staff that your towels have hair in them after my first shower; no new ones were provided to me. Your hotel is falsely advertised and is not appropriately priced for how poor of a stay this was. I asked for a partial refund because this was an awful stay; the least you could have done was be professional and provide a partial refund for this awful experience. Instead you refused and chose to start a fight. Future travellers should be informed about the false advertising and subpar experiences guests are having at this hotel.

Frequent Traveller Tip: As a frequent traveller to Barcelona. I've enjoyed this hotel. Its clean, service is nice and quick, the room are funcional and the locations is pretty good. For travellers seeking a good place to stay and who will not spend mich time in the hotel rooms anyway, this is a very good option. Walking time to Pl. Catalunya: max 20 minutes, more like 15. Walking to Rambla: 5 minutes. Bus and Subway are all close by (max. 5 minutes). Many restaurants, Cafés and shops also around. I would return. Additional tip: avoid rooms x15, x14, x16....so room number 14 to 16 for every floor. Reason: Proximity to the Elevator and thist, its more noisy. The Room doors are rather thin.