Negrecoste Hotel & Spa

“Very nice hotel great location!”

We ate here the first night and had a lovely meal. Breakfast was also very nice, the staff were all very pleasant especially Louna, Apologies if incorrect spelling. Lovely spa.

“Quiet hotel in perfect central location”

great location on the main street in the centre of town. And, as others have said, despite the location, the room is quiet at night as the street outside is pedestrianised. Breakfast is waiter service and good. I hadn't realised at first that the entire menu was included in the price. This meant th… more

great location on the main street in the centre of town. And, as others have said, despite the location, the room is quiet at night as the street outside is pedestrianised. Breakfast is waiter service and good. I hadn't realised at first that the entire menu was included in the price. This meant that we could have fruit and yoghurt, an omelette, and a pain au chocolat and coffee (I know. It's a lot....but then we don't wat at lunch!). Rooms are small but comfy. Reception staff are helpful and friendly, and the restaurant staff go like the clappers to serve everyone. Great for a short break.

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“Nice clean hotel, well situated but not for women alone”

There are many positive things to say about Hotel Negrecoste, but a few negative that are important to note. On the positive side, the location is great, the food at the restaurant in front (Le Mirabeau) is very good, and the service friendly if a bit efficient at the front desk. The room was clean… more

There are many positive things to say about Hotel Negrecoste, but a few negative that are important to note. On the positive side, the location is great, the food at the restaurant in front (Le Mirabeau) is very good, and the service friendly if a bit efficient at the front desk. The room was clean, and the bed comfortable. This is a small hotel and they make it feel very personalized. However, the first night I was there, a woman traveling alone, at 1:30 am I had 3 knocks at my door, waking me up, and no voice of explanation. Before I could respond I heard someone starting to enter my room with a key still without saying anything. I ran to the door, held it closed and screamed very loudly until the man said he was from the front desk and there was a fire in my room. I said there was no fire and to go away, which he did. The next morning, after a few hours I was able to speak with the hotel manager. She of course said it was the hotel security system that noted on their computer a fire in that room, and that it had never happened before that it said there was a fire in a room (with no smoke or excessively hot steam on from the shower). She was apologetic, but not excessively so, and was not that sympathetic to the terror of being woken up at night by a man walking into your room. He didnt speak before entering or explain what he was doing, and only after I screamed said he thought the room was empty. Honestly, I wanted to believe them but my spidey senses say that something else was going on. I could not sleep further that night, and struggled the next 2 nights when they would not refund my reservation. To me, they should have offered some recompense in some way. It was deeply disturbing and I will never forget how unsafe I felt that night and the next. So, women traveling alone, I would suggest elsewhere! Final note, part of the reason I stayed at this hotel was because of the hot tub noted in the description. That is only available for extra 30 euros for one hour at a time. That seems to be false advertising to me.

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“Nice hotel but difficult room in which to spend several days”

The Negrecoste is a lovely hotel with the most perfect location of any hotel in Aix – in the center of the south facing side of the main pedestrian street Cours Mirabeau (separating the Quatier Mazarin, an elegant old affluent residential neighborhood, from the old town behind the hotel. Thus, ever… more

The Negrecoste is a lovely hotel with the most perfect location of any hotel in Aix – in the center of the south facing side of the main pedestrian street Cours Mirabeau (separating the Quatier Mazarin, an elegant old affluent residential neighborhood, from the old town behind the hotel. Thus, everything – literally everything -- is within easy walking distance. There is a relatively large Monoprix not a block down the street for anything you need. The location is the primary reason we chose this hotel and it is one of the best features. However, the hotel rooms themselves pale in comparison. There are some very unusual aspects to the large suite we stayed in, all of which were undesirable and made trying to make the room work for several days difficult at best. Positives + location + AC works very well, is individually controlled in the room, and the blackout shades work well + the shower has very good water pressure and the controls are pushbutton on/off + the closet has a lot of shelf space and moderate hanging space (however, there are some real negatives to the closet – see “Negatives”) + the front desk staff is very pleasant, professional, and helpful, especially the two Camilles + the bathroom has 2 sinks and a very good, powerful hair blow dryer (not so common in the EU) + you do not hear any street noise sounds from the room Negatives Room --the room’s closet, while spacious, has an extremely annoying feature – it has motion detector sensors that are very sensitive (yet strangely inconsistent) so that when you trigger the sensor, the lights in the closet go on concurrent with a loud “plink” sound or, conversely, the lights go off and again concurrent with the loud “plink.” So when you are close to the closet, lights on/plink! And step away for a moment, lights off/plink! And go back lights on/plink! So you have to stay rooted in place to keep from triggering the lights off or on/plink! This became extremely annoying within the first hour of getting settled in the suite, and was especially so early in the morning when one of us got up early to go exercise and the other wanted to sleep. Good luck with that/plink! Finally we became so irritated that we found and taped a paper towel over each sensor to block it. Also, the closet doors are very heavy and very difficult to push open and closed. When you push a door on the slider to one side to access that side of the closet, the other person cannot access the opposite side of the closet. The slider doors are very inconvenient and difficult. -- the suite is divided into about 40% bathroom space and 60% bedroom & closet space. There is a big step up into the bathroom / conversely down into the room. The floor is very dark gray tile and at night, in the dark, you do not see this step up or down and so it is very easy to trip. The amount of the total footprint allocated to the bathroom is far more than needed. At least half is dedicated to a very, extra large bathtub that takes up at least 40% of the footprint of the floor space. This is probably because the hotel is a “spa” hotel but the waste of space for a bathtub that we did not use, when there is very little counter and or storage space, was extremely annoying. -- the layout and furniture is strange. There is a very ugly, two seat fabric loveseat, a small round table, a desk with chair, and the bed. The desktop is completely cluttered, littered with a tray of coffee maker and cups and also, strangely, an old, large Apple desktop computer. Why would I want to use this? This is the ONLY counter top storage area that is not a closet shelf, and it is incredibly annoying to have all of this junk on the desktop. So I asked them to take away the coffee station, which they did, and we put the large Apple computer monitor in the display nook above the desk. The desktop was completely filthy and dusty, so I cleaned it and then used that to put my carry-on and purse on. -- there is what appears to be a large chest of drawers on the bedroom side of the glass divider between the bathroom and bedroom, facing the bed. We could not figure out how to open the drawers (in our quest for storage space). We also could not figure out where the TV was. We asked at the front desk and it turns out that the furniture is actually a storage unit for the TV; with the remote the top folds up and the very large TV rises up out of the furniture. This was bizarre and also meant that there was not storage where we had hoped. --the room is incredibly dark – without the two south facing windows to let in the sun, the room would be very depressing. The floor is dark gray; the walls and floor of the bathroom are dark gray tile. Lighting is poor and dim. The dark gray glass divider between the bathroom and bedroom areas is useless. Even with the darkened glass, anyone can see easily into the shower through the glass from anywhere in the room so there is no privacy at all. -- there is no place to put a suitcase, much less four (suitcases and carryons) for two people. We had to ask for 2 luggage racks, which most fortunately we were able to get. Finding space to put the racks and the suitcases was almost as hard. -- there are NO towel hooks, racks, heated towel wall mounted set of bars like in every other EU hotel. NOTHING. There is no place to put a clean towel to reach from the shower. There is no place to hang up a wet towel to dry. There is no place to put a hand towel to dry your hands. NOTHING. We ended up using the useless tub as a towel rack of sorts. And this when there is a card in the room admonishing people if they do not re-use their towels to “save the planet.” Give me a break. Then put in some racks. -- there is no clock in the room. Hotel  Breakfast is a bad value. As lovely as the seating area is, with a wonderful people watching location, the service is slow and the value is poor. A full expensive breakfast consists of a small croissant, a small two egg omelette, a tiny bowl of fruit, and dried sugared fruit listed as cereal.

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