After sailing with Virgin Voyages, I flew from Athens to Nice, France for a two night visit before flying on to Dublin. The Hyatt properties near Nice were extremely expensive (August is peak season), so I decided to try the Crown Plaza near the Nice airport.
The property is new and shares a building with a Holiday Inn Express. Award nights were 40,000 IHG points per night, and I had a free night with my IHG Chase Visa card.
Location
The Crowne Plaza Nice is located a five minute walk from the Nice airport.
Next to the hotel is the Nice Saint-Augustin train station as well as a stop for the Nice street car. For transportation options, it is a perfect location.
However the area around the hotel does not have anything to offer. It is an airport hotel so there is nothing to walk to in the immediate area.
The heart of Nice is about 20 minutes by tram. Other destinations on the French Riviera including Cannes, Antibes, and Monaco are easy to access by the train.
Check In
I arrived a bit after 3:00pm which is hotel check in. The front revolving door was broken, so I had a bit of trouble finding out how to get in the lobby.
Once inside, I checked in and asked about upgrades as a Diamond. I was told that there were no upgrades available but I could check back the next day to see about switching rooms to something upgraded.
The lobby is clean and modern though small. There is a bar and restaurant on the ground floor that takes up the majority of what would be the lobby space.
Room
I was assigned room 412. A room key is needed to access the guest floors.
The room is modern and a comfortable size. As you enter the bathroom is on the left, then the closet, and then the room.
The design of the room is quite upscale with blues, whites and wood finishes. The fixtures are all quite modern and bold. Crowne Plaza properties are like DoubleTree hotels to me; they are a mix and you can’t be sure what you are going to get. This was a very nice Crowne Plaza in terms of the built structure.
The bed is against a wall with accent pieces and back lighting. It faces a wall mounted TV and some artwork perched on a railing.
On both sides of the bed are European power and USB outlets. Only one side of the bed has controls for the room lights.
In front of the very skinny window is an arm chair. A desk and fridge (with coffee set up) are opposite. Two bottles of water were provided the first day but not replaced after that.
Because of the design choice for the exterior, the room only has a thin window. They could have made the entire wall a floor to ceiling window, but decided instead to have most of the exterior wall solid. This helps keep the room cool as the air conditioning is not very powerful.
The room looks out towards the airport.
Back towards the bathroom is a large built in closet with plenty of storage.
Bathroom
The bathroom has a single vanity with a doorless walk in shower. The shower has both an overhead rain shower and a hand held wand. The water pressure was not very strong.
The bath products are wall mounted and seemed high quality.
Service
Overall I found the service of the hotel to be lacking. As an IHG Diamond elite I did not receive any sort of upgrade. Breakfast was included as a Diamond benefit, but it wasn’t correctly coded to my account so I had to go get it fixed with the front desk. Getting a late check out was difficult and required me stopping by the front desk three different times. There is a gym but because my key card didn’t work I wasn’t able to get up to take photos of it.
Overall the Crowne Plaza Nice Grand Arenas is a modern, new build property near the airport and train station. There isn’t a lot directly around the hotel and service could be refined. But the rooms feel luxurious.