Rosewood Hôtel de Crillon Review

We recently spent three nights at Rosewood Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, including being here on Bastille Day, and overall, we were very happy with our stay. The hotel sits on Place de la Concorde, so it’s a great location for Bastille Day celebrations, as well as for exploring Paris. It’s also within easy walking distance to luxury shopping on Rue Saint-Honoré (Hermès, Cartier, etc.).

We stayed in a Premier Suite after receiving an upgrade.

Hotel

Hôtel de Crillon is one of France’s designated “Palace Hotels,” a distinction given to those hotels in France with the highest level of luxury and service. Other Paris hotels with the same designation include Four Seasons George V, La Réserve, Le Bristol, and Cheval Blanc Paris, among others.

If you’re completely devoted to Four Seasons George V or Ritz Paris, those hotels may still be your preference. However, if you’re looking for a Palace hotel with a slightly lower price point, or simply prefer a different aesthetic, Hôtel de Crillon is absolutely worth considering.

The atmosphere is refined without feeling stuffy. The lobby has a similar level of formality to Ritz Paris and FS George V, but the hotel is surprisingly intimate with fewer than 80 rooms. The “feel” of the hotel definitely is smaller than FS George V and others.

The hotel is filled with history. The building itself was commissioned by Louis XV as a residence, and Marie Antoinette lived here and reportedly took piano lessons in the Marie Antoinette Suite overlooking Place de la Concorde. Inside, the public spaces beautifully blend this historic architecture with modern Parisian luxury.

Dining options include the Michelin-starred L’Écrin as well as Nonos, which is described as casual but still feels fairly upscale.

The spa is located in the basement, as is common for many Paris luxury hotels, but it has skylights in some areas, including over the pool, so it has a lot of natural light. It is beautifully designed with calming blue and turquoise colors. The indoor pool is a great size and was fairly busy during our visit, likely because Paris was approaching 100°F that day.

Les Ambassadeurs Bar is one of the hotel’s highlights. If Versailles-style opulence isn’t your taste, it may not be your favorite, but the gold detailing, painted ceilings, and overall design are genuinely incredible in person.

There’s also an excellent on-site pâtisserie with a cozy seating area, plus two quiet interior courtyards that really make you feel like there isn’t a busy city just outside.

Room

We loved our Premier Suite. While it is under 800 square feet, and not the largest suite we have been in, it felt like the perfect size for the two of us because of the way it was laid out.

We really thought the character of the rooms was unique compared to other many hotels, and it really felt like a retreat each evening after long days in the sun. The finishings all feel expensive and beautiful and we found ourselves even commenting on how nice things like the window latches are (and how complicated they were due to their beautiful design). The accessories are also very well curated and layered that it feels so much less cookie cutter than many hotels. It really feels like you are in your own luxury apartment.

The suite included a separate living room with sofa bed, dining table, small bar area, large bedroom, and beautiful marble bathroom.

There were televisions everywhere (living room, hidden behind the bedroom mirror, hidden behind opaque glass by the bathtub, and another hidden in the bathroom mirror). There were a lot of options for watching television but were integrated well enough that they don’t feel problematic and could be easily ignored when not in use.

The marble bathroom was beautiful, with a very large soaking tub, double vanity, and a (nice, but not large) separate shower. The hotel also provides Dyson hair dryers with all the attachments, which my wife very much appreciated.

One of my favorite touches was that they provide two beautiful leather toiletry bags for each guest stocked with things like toothbrushes and toothpaste.

We did have a pastry waiting in our room upon arrival, from the hotel’s pâtisserie, which started my love of their pastries. We tried multiple other pastries throughout our stay, and they were some of the best pastries we’ve ever had.

One thing that really stood out was how incredibly quiet the room was. A family across the hall had young children running in the hall and screaming at their reflection into the mirror in the hallway (and banging on the wall of our room) every morning, yet once inside our suite we couldn’t hear a thing. I even went back to the door and listened near the door to see if they were still out there screaming to confirm they were. The soundproofing of the rooms is excellent.

The AC also deserves a mention because we really like a cold room (around 65°F), and despite the extreme heat during our stay, the suite stayed cold. The only time it didn’t was when I accidentally didn’t close the complicated window latch properly. Luckily, I fixed it once I noticed it was warmer by the window and the room cooled down very quickly after that.

Service

Overall, I would say the service was excellent. Not quite the level you may get at luxury resorts in the Maldives or SEA, but still very good, especially for a city hotel.

For instance, when we arrived, our car accidentally dropped off my in-laws (and their luggage) at Hotel de Crillon even though they were staying at the Sofitel down the street. The doormen from Hôtel de Crillon voluntarily carried all of their luggage and escorted them directly to the Sofitel. I tried to decline them needing to do this as I was going to help them myself, and they refused to not help once they knew it was needed.

As another example, on Bastille Day, my in-laws needed to leave for the airport from Sofitel, but road closures meant their hotel was not accessible by car and their hotel told them they’d have to walk roughly 20 minutes in nearly 100-degree heat with their luggage to reach a transportation area. While the Sofitel offered to help them roll their luggage, this option was not ideal for my in-laws. I mentioned the situation to the Hôtel de Crillon concierge, and within minutes they spoke with the manager out front who offered one of their golf carts to drive my in-laws through the closures to the taxi pickup.

Later that same day, we encountered the same issue with road closures while switching to La Réserve for our final days in Paris. Once again, Hôtel de Crillon loaded all of our luggage onto a golf cart and drove us directly to La Réserve. Both hotel teams joked that had never seen an arrival like this before. The normal route would have been to meet the La Réserve team outside of the restricted travel area, but the Hôtel de Crillon team made sure we didn’t have to add the extra steps and worked with the road closure teams to make our transfer seamless.

I would note that while every suite technically comes with a butler, after our butler escorted us to the room when we initially arrived, we never saw her again. I think “butler” here is more of a dedicated guest services role than the traditional butler role for rooms below the specialty suites. That said, every WhatsApp request we made was answered almost immediately. I think the longest we waited for anything we requested via WhatsApp was 8 minutes (I checked after they dropped off what we requested because it seemed longer than usual for them and was surprised it was only 8 minutes). And this was at 11:30 pm, so understandable to be “slower” than usual, even though this wouldn’t be considered slow anywhere else.

The only area where service felt not as polished was breakfast. It wasn’t bad service, but it was noticeably less warm and attentive than the rest of the hotel. We had a different server each day and none of them seemed to want to be there. Breakfast service was still professional and prompt, just with a coldness that was a contrast to the rest of the stay.

Food

We had breakfast in one of the courtyard garden areas each morning and it was beautiful and peaceful. You can also eat in the beautiful dining room just off the courtyard.

For the complimentary breakfast (when booking with me with Rosewood Elite perks), you essentially get the American breakfast, or the euro equivalent of other options (€65 per person). There was a Parisian breakfast as well that was just pastries and berries, plus coffee and juice, while the American breakfast included an egg option, sausage/bacon choice, pastries, berries, coffee, and juice. Both options came with way more bread and pastries than we could possibly eat for breakfast. The eggs were delicious and juices were fresh squeezed. They also had a full a la carte menu available that you can order from, complimentary (with Rosewood Elite) up to the previously mentioned €65 per person, with extra charges over that amount.

Overall, we were happy with our breakfast each morning.

We also had room service one evening with my in-laws after a particular grueling day of standing in the heat, when none of us wanted to go back out for dinner at a restaurant. While room service is always pricey at luxury hotels, we were all happy with our dinner. We each got pasta dishes and the portions were surprisingly large, and each dish was very tasty.

The hotel also has an ice cream kiosk/cart set up out front during the day ran by the pâtisserie from inside, which we did try one day. They had things like homemade ice cream sandwiches, which we all loved so much. I thought it was one of the best cookie ice cream sandwiches I had ever eaten.

The Butterfly Pâtisserie (mentioned already but naming it for this section) was absolutely a highlight. The selection isn’t huge, but everything we tried was excellent and well worth stopping in for. They even do a very high-end job of packaging your pastry if taking it to go.

Conclusion

This is a Palace hotel, so it is priced accordingly. While it varies depending on timing, rooms generally start around $2,000 (USD) per night, with the premier suite around $5,000 (USD) per night.

The room was beautiful, the food and pastries are great, and most of the service was really exceptional. While it may not be the right hotel for everyone since there are a lot of incredible hotels in Paris, we really had an amazing time.

I have a lot more videos and photos of the hotel, including the grand premier room and some of their signature suites (including one with Eiffel Tower views and a Karl Lagerfeld suite), but I didn’t want to clutter the sub with individual video posts like I usually do since Reddit doesn’t allow mixing photos and videos, so trying out a slightly different format: feel free to visit my Instagram to see more, including this room walkthrough.