Hotel la Zoologie & Spa Bordeaux

Amazing service from start to finish. The hotel is very unique and has a lot of character. The staff were amazing and friendly, would highly recommend and will be returning!

The building is nice and our room is fine (although the soap dish has fallen off the wall in the shower and has not been replaced and the water pressure is not up to the task of filling the huge bathtub.) At 10AM this morning there was virtually no food left at the breakfast buffet and the single staff member didn't seem able to do anything about it. However, the main reason I will not stay at La Zoologie again is that when I asked for a drink at 11PM this evening I was informed the such a thing was not available at all. Not even a non-alcoholic drink! This hotel has pretensions to being first class but it is not.

GOOD Lovely staff Great location, 10 minute walk from main station Clean and spacious room Comfortable bed Large fluffy towels Good breakfast buffet Quiet room Interesting decor, clever reuse of old University science building with beautiful zoological art motifs everywhere BAD No top sheet. This seems to be a horrible trend in hotels worldwide - travellers should not have to bring their own sheet or light covering. The doona was too hot and thick, but the room was too cold if you took the doona off. Would a top sheet and a light-weight blanket be so impossible to provide? No mini fridge - couldn’t keep complimentary water bottles cold. Although there’s complimentary tea and coffee equipment and supplies, there’s no milk, because no mini fridge No bathroom, as such, just 3 separate facilities within the room. Toilet next to main door, with its own door, but hand-washing facilities on the other side of the room in a separate alcove near the bed. No door or screen on the shower, just a very cold open cavity, next to the hand basin. No soap holders near the basin or in the shower space Nowhere to hang wet clothes, shower cap, or washing. Not enough hanging space on a small metal grill on the wall for two full-sized bath towels - one had to be draped on the back of a plastic chair No plug for the hand basin for hand washing of clothes Curtain rod is 3 to 4 metres off the floor, but no cord or rod to close the curtain - you just have to tug awkwardly at the curtain to close the gap in the middle No power points next to the bed for charging devices Air con control is a small shiny black plastic box on the wall - the power switch is an invisible touch button on the top edge of the device, in the same shiny black plastic. The controls are touch icons in tiny faint grey font, almost invisible. So completely unintuitive that you have to ring reception for assistance with something that should be easy to operate. The walls and ceiling are all concrete and the ceiling is so high, it’s almost impossible to heat the room (same for the cavernous shower space - must be a miserable experience having a shower in there in winter). While the design and decor of the hotel is beautiful and ingenious, the practical details have been ignored. It’s a classic case of form over function.

I booked this hotel because of the proximity to the train station. Unfortunately, although it appears on a map to be fairly close, it is very difficult to walk there from the station, particularly if you have substantial luggage. The sidewalks and roads surrounding the hotel are under construction which makes it difficult to walk and also impossible for an Uber or taxi to approach the property. Note there is virtually no exterior signage, so identifying the property on a first visit is, well, challenging. Also, there is the matter of noise. The hotel is directly adjacent to a school/day-care and the children are yelling (screaming) constantly. That may not be a problem on weekends, but during the week the noise was constant until 18:00 making an afternoon nap impossible. The staff was very nice and understanding but, obviously, they were helpless to deal with any of the issues noted.

Location is currently difficult, car park is nearby, but if arriving by car you have to park illegally to drop your luggage. Trams within easy walking distance. Check in was easy, staff friendly enough. They are the positives. Breakfast was chaos, no cups,no spoons,no bowls. When spoons arrive for cereal, they are teaspoons! This wasn't just one breakfast,but recurrent. Seldom were staff available to assist. Not just us, guests helping guests find utensils. Room was OK although the skirting boards in the bathroom had not been cleaned for sometime. No refrigerator of any description in the room. Although our accommodation was all prepaid, on checkout we were greeted with the full invoice and someone else's drinks bill, even then we were double charged for taxes. We would never return.

I had the unfortunate experience of being put in a room above the main road, on 2 nights when the road happened to be repaved overnight. The noise was so unbearable and my bed actually shook with the drilling going on, so even ear plugs didn't cut it for helping me to sleep. I appreciate this is unlikely to be other travellers experience, but it is worth noting how unhelpful the staff have been, both in the moment and since as I've tried to get any kind of compensation for the poor experience I had. I also very much query value for money when the base rate for a room doesn't include breakfast or spa access, and location isn't even a feature to fall back on when charging such inflated rates. It's a good 20-30 minute walk from the hotel to get to anywhere visitable in Bordeaux, so I'd advise carefully considering whether staying at Hotel Zoologie is worth the money. It certainly wasn't in my experience.

Overall disappointing.. largely because this hotel has SO much potential to be much better. Perhaps we just had a bad experience as there are a few other good reviews. The building itself and decor is lovely. It is very serene with nice outdoor spaces. The best word I could find to describe the service is “indifferent” and as a customer it felt like no one was really in charge or willing to be the person taking full responsibility for the well-running of the establishment. The more senior the staff, the more it appeared it was not their job to even acknowledge guests presence and this set the tone for the establishment. A problem meant that we did not feel it was safe (and it definitely felt uncomfortable) to stay in our room. As the hotel was fully booked they could not move us to another part of the hotel that was unaffected by the problem . We understand that such situations can happen. Although the receptionist kindly helped us to check out of our room, in reality this meant we were reluctantly leaving 2 days and searching for another hotel. Again management was totally invisible and it felt like nobody was taking charge of the situation or the well-being of their customers or staff.

We found our stay at the Zoologie a little disappointing. The building is beautiful and the location is reasonable, but the service levels at the hotel let it down. - Spa information is not clearly communicated - guests are not informed that they have to book in advance and the free period is not well communicated upon arrival - Room service took 40 minutes for a cheese plate + drinks - Inexplicably, loud music being played at 0300 despite the bar closing at midnight. It took too long after being woken up, phoning the front desk and asking them to stop before it eventually did - Staff generally could be more helpful. We had requested some help to understand opening times for museums etc but these were never followed up on. Not the worst, but we certainly wouldn’t hurry back.