Irish College Leuven

The room was large and clean, as expected. But it was not configured as a hotel in the sense that the usual services were disappointing. Ensuring that a botle of water was frozen overnight to keep my medicines cool was a major undertaking (the room, despite its price did not have a frigo). There was no hair dryer either (it had to be especially requested and it seemed one had to make a deposit in cash, which in our case was skipped because the concierge was not aware of it; the 'funny' thing is that when we returned it the morning after the concierge of the morning gave us 10 euro, which we refused to take, obviously!). The mattress was sufficiently old to show deformation at the centre, which caused me (mild) back pain during the night. The small ventilator in the room was a joke (in the midst of a canicule!). In the toilets there was only soap for the shower, no shampoo, no any other of the usual 'goodies' that one finds in most hotels. The magnetic cards were cancelled at least one hour before check-out time and renewing them took me two trips to the service desk. All members of the staff were VERY KIND, but not very knowledgeable of what needed to be done at each instance. On the parking, I received several warnings beforehand of the possibility of it being full (even up to one day before arrival), which was very surprising given the fact that the day after, upon my arrival, saw that the parking was EMPTY. ALL spaces (about 20?) we available. Could they not verify availability in advance and avoid the sense of uncertainty (as I was arriving from 900 kms away) that brought me to nearly change my reservation to another hotel? To sum up, the physical infrastructure and location were very good, the staff very kind, but the setup lacked the expertise of a hotel to ensure that guests are reasonably well attended.