Mama Shelter Toulouse 4 stars

Family friendly

Amber at the front deck is a unable to deal with people, I watched two guest ask her simple questions to which she and her backward cap couldn’t even deal with, and when it was my turn she was unable to give me a key to my room ‘ its a very basic task to which she turn into the biggest mess up ! Seriously amber stop playing with the dray queens and do your job., also don’t say you speak English when you clearly havnt got clue, im a regular guest. And staff like this reall let your hotel down ! Please do better

Good stay

The irony of the problems on this trip was fairly thick. My wife and I stay in a wide variety of Accor properties. A couple of years ago was the first Mama Shelter that we stayed in. Mamas are colorful, functional and overall interesting. Maybe they’re not super family friendly with a bunch of amenities for kids like a playground or play area, a lot of family friendly movies on TV, or in-room kids bathroom products. Nonetheless, we (I more than my wife) usually like to visit Mama Shelters. I got the email from Mama Shelter about the 3 nights for 2 [MAMABREAK3] and the Toulouse property and city was the first place I checked because we wanted to visit both. We found good rates that coincided with good flights. I did not check Accor’S. site to see which hotels in Toulouse were best for kids. We weren’t going to be in the room much since we wanted to see the city. I’ve been told that if we don’t book with one kids, that the housekeeping won’t put a crib, cot or set up the pullout couch. We don’t want or need that stuff because we travel with a small pop up tent/bed for our daughter. I just look at pictures of the rooms to make sure there’S. space to put it. After all, she’S. 4 and doesn’t need much space. After she wakes up in the morning, we can close up the bed, store it away and have room in the room. We arrive in the afternoon on Friday, I go to check-in. I hand off my passport and give my name. The girl at check-in sees that I’ve come in my with my wife and begins to tell me that we can’t take the room because we’re 3 people and only booked 2 adults. Then we get into a discussion about the hotel’S. self-elected policy to mark their rooms as double occupancy so a (young) family of 3 can’t officially take it. She then jumped to looking up rates for an additional room so we can stay for the weekend. She quotes me a price that’S. quite literally 1.5x what we’ve already paid for the first room to get the second room. At that point, I said no and asked to speak to the manager. She said okay. She messaged the manager. It took a while and finally, she called me back up to the reception desk to tell me that the manager has approved our stay in the designated room we booked. She handed me the key and gave me the regular info & instructions about the hotel. I was never recognized as an ALL Platinum member which I believe is still the 2nd highest level with ALL, a level that generally (when “available”) comes with a room upgrade among other perks. I was never asked about a room upgrade. I never asked because I didn’t have an opportunity really. Sure I could have in the midst of the disagreement about room occupancy policy but the reason question is, why wasn’t it offered? Marriot Bonvoy Platinum members are prepared for. Upon check-in, they’re informed they’ve been upgrade. If no upgrade is available, I’ve seen the staff offer something in lieu of the lack of upgrade. We weren’t try to game the system either and book a double occupancy and get a 3-4 person room. We just didn’t need the space on this trip so we didn’t care. In fact, the room worked just fine. As we gathered our bags to go up to the room, the receptionist said the manager would reach out when he was available. Long story short, we never saw or heard from the manager. The room - it was good but not perfect. The bathroom shower door was not perfectly lined up with the glass wall and if one wasn’t careful, the two pieces of glass could slam together, which seemed dangerous. There was no rubber/plastic seal. The other problem was the dust on the upper shelves. Most, if not all Mama Shelters we’ve been in, do not have drawers. Everything is open concept which honestly is fine (with me. My wife is a different story). For the 3 days, we were able to get our stuff out and store it without an issue. Laying clothes on a dusty shelf isn’t great though. Okay, those were the room issues. The positives. The AC/heating worked. It was really responsive. The room faced the side of the restaurant on the 2nd floor and the windows did a good job keeping out the noise. It was muffled but not zero noise. It didn’t bother us though. The red lights around the bed frame was a favorite of our daughter. The bed was really comfortable. Things for improvement, the bench design isn’t stable with the way the legs are positioned. It’S. easy to tip over. The TV announcing the volume every time you put the volume up or down (likely a tv setting that we didn’t bother looking into changing) is not useful or pleasant. Hotel location - Awesome. Centrally located. The area around the hotel is good. The proximity to the metro is good. The action isn’t right outside the hotel but a little bit away which makes it calmer when getting in and out of the hotel before going into the buzz of the tourist area. Other ALL perks - the welcome drink is a bottle of water in the fridge. That’S. silly! Some Mama Shelters actually offer you a drink per adult at the bar like most of the other brands in the ACCOR umbrella. A water in the fridge is typically something that all brands above Ibis offer for free. Not as the welcome drink. The welcome gift, now that was nice. It was a craft bottle of apple juice and a delicious chocolate chip cookie! Late checkout? Nope, another thing that we couldn’t take advantage of. Here’S. another thing we’ve been asked to do by most hotel employees…”Check in the morning to see if a late checkout is available.” (Who else has been told this before?) So we get up in the morning before leaving to site see more and we go to reception to ask about a late checkout. Before asking my name, room number or anything, we’re rejected. We don’t get asked, what time would you need it until. It was “No. I’m sorry, late checkouts aren’t available today. You should have asked us yesterday.” Regular checkout is noon. We needed it until 2 pm because we planned to head to the airport at 2:00 for our early evening flight. We were able to store our bags but honestly, I’m really, really confident that the hotel wasn’t full when we checked in and wasn’t getting full on Monday morning when we checked out. The lobby never seemed busy. We didn’t pass many people in the hallway or elevator or hear many people in their rooms. So I’m not sold that was the issue. Staff - All of the doormen were great! They seemed well trained. They always greeted us or smiled and one of them was very engaging with our daughter. It was cute. The front desk was hit or miss. Some greeted us and engaged politely, others didn’t. It seemed like the first response was “no” as opposed to “let’S. see” or “let’S. figure this out!” That’S. a training thing. There will likely be other families of 3s that end up having this issue and I hope that the staff member tries to make the customer’S. entry into the hotel a more pleasant experience rather than confrontational. I’d like to see all hotels adopt a more family friendly approach when it comes to 3 person families. You can’t/don’t want to put a 4 year old in their own hotel room because it’S. not particularly safe and it’S. not nice at all for the hotel to split up the parents. (I had to remove some stuff here because I hit my character limit on this survey) Would we return? No. Overall, we didn’t feel welcome upon welcome and it was too inconsistent across the 3 days. We didn’t get any Platinum benefits. We would very likely book a different Accor hotel in Toulouse. There are a ton of hotels to choose from. The bigger issue is that my wife is done with Mama Shelter. The experience hurt the whole brand in her eyes. I’m still 50/50 but I do agree with her. We might have to do a little more research on the Mama before booking. We’ve had good experiences in Lisbon, Marseille and London Shoreditch (best so far), but at the end of the day, there is less predictability with the ALL program and you get less points because of how Accor categorizes Mama Shelter. So there’S. a lot of food for thought for us.

Location is good, room adequate, but no frills. Drink the lonely single bottle of water in the mini bar and remain parched for the rest of the week, it won’t be replaced. The breakfast room bustles with self important staff rushing back and forth, where to? No idea, the coffee’s cold, the eggs? a bowl of slop, bacon had ran out, as had the beans. It’s France so they had baguette and that’s about it. Couldn’t find a spoon, or an egg cup, and struggled to locate a plate. Food, awful. Service, chaotic. But, bed was ok…

Overall it was a positive experience. The front desk staff and door man were kind and polite to us. The hotel is in a great area - walking distance to city center. The room was a bit dirty which is why I rated it a 7 - there were multiple hand marks on the walls that looked like old makeup that was not washed off from the previous stay. Everything else was clean. Checking the wallls and back of doors is needed!