When we read or hear the comments made by Parisian hotels clients, one of the most pointed out comment is about the size of the room. Whether it is in a 2 star hotel or a 4 star facility, it is quite common to read the room was small or even too small. Yes, the rooms in Paris’ hotels are small, well at least smaller than elsewhere since from a hotel to the next with the same category, it will be quite similar.
Why?
There are 2 reasons to that: an historical reason and an economical reason.
On the historical side : The Baron Haussmann left his mark on Paris, as he was prefect of the city from 1853 to 1870. Thanks to him, there are long and straight avenues in Paris : the Champs Elysees, the Boulevard Saint Germain, the Boulevard Sebastopol, the Boulevard Voltaire and many more. The construction of these avenues was part of a global project to change Paris and that was beyond creating these new roads. Therefore, this program, Napoleon III initiated and the Baron Haussmann directed, was covering many parts of city-planning: parks, buildings’ facades, urban construction, etc.
So, since many hotels are in a Haussmannian building, their architecture was inherited from that period of time and so they had to work around that heritage. Changing the interior of a hotel is always possible but then it’s all about the economical part, which is the second reason why rooms in Paris’ hotels can seem small.
Real estate in Paris is expensive, even very expensive ; so as the rents go up, the size of the rooms decrease. So for obvious economical reasons, hotels rather like to make a profit by building rooms smaller than cities where real estate will be cheaper.
But, this is not specific to Paris, cities where the real estate prices are consequent have their hotels facing the same size problems… New York and London have the same ‘problem’.
On the other hand, even if it is possible to be disappointed because of the size of the hotel room, it is necessary to keep in mind that the size of the rooms is a true criteria to get stars, whether is it this year’s new standards or the old ones. Therefore, the new hotel standards plan that a room for 2 people must have a surface area (bathroom included) between 113 sq feet for 1 star hotels and 260 sq feet for 5 star hotels. For a single room, that surface area gets down to 102 sq feet for a one star hotel to 215 sq feet for a 5 star hotel.
