Rewiew Sofitel Legend Métropole Hanoi : a super top stay

Here is a review of this fantastic hotel. This was my 2nd stay there but the 1st one was 10 years ago…

This is truly an hotel with a unique atmosphere in its beautiful French colonial style, and this is an historical place where many important people have stayed and many things happened during the complicated 20th century history of Vietnam. So it fits perfectly in the Sofitel Legend category. Interestingly, when this hotel was taken over by Accor in 1992, it was under the Pullman brand but it rapidly moved to Sofitel.

Traveling with family members (platinum also), we had booked 2 premium rooms in the opera wing. Three days before the stay we both received the following e-mail from the hotel :

Bonjour Mr. Goldorak,

Warm Greetings from Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi – offering over a 110 years of personalized experiences!

 Since you are our valued Le Club Accor Platinum member, we have been trying to contact you via your mobile phone number; however, we could not manage to reach you. Therefore, I am writing you this email in order to reconfirm your booking.

You have reserved with us one Premium room which we are delighted to offer a complimentary with access to our Club Lounge (including breakfast, afternoon tea and evening cocktail). The room is reserved for X nights from XX to XXX 2017.

Kindly be informed that we have well received all your valuable requests for a non-smoking room in the high floor, far away from the elevator and will try our best to arrange accordingly. We have also noted your request for an early check in time at 12:00 on XXX. Therefore, please kindly let us know if you may need any assistance to arrange your transportation pick up to the hotel and our team will be more than happy to assist.

We sincerely appreciate your loyalty to our hotel brand and we look forward to welcome you here with us!

Please rest assured that we always remain at your entire disposal, should you need any further assistance.

The only weird things in those e-mails were the « we tried to contact you on your cell phone » (none of our phones rang or had a missed call so I am sure they never tried to call us) and we never requested an early check-in as we were planning to check-in in the evening. Of course no big deal. But there was someting not mentionned in this e-mail : the room upgrade. I enquired replying to the e-mail and I received some apologies back but saying that they could not guarantee the upgrade at that time (the usual « subject to availability « ). I made a dummy booking and saw that the hotel was full, so I was not very optimistic for the upgrades, but I was wrong ;-)

We arrived around 9 pm and I mentioned immediately to the bell captain that we were platinum. We were immediately escorted to the Club lounge in the Opera wing. The Club was empty and the majordome on duty took great care of us. We were offered a glass of Taittinger champagne as a welcome drink, which we enjoyed while he was taking care of the check-in formalities. How nice J

He confirmed that both Premium rooms were upgraded to « Grand Premium rooms » (Opera wing). For the BF (which was not included in our rate), he explained us that we could have it for free at the lounge or at any of the restaurant of the hotel (the Vietnamese and the French one) and also for free in room. Top !!

Drink vouchers were given + welcome letters.

He then escorted us to our rooms which were lovely. Here are the pictures of the 2 rooms.

Room #1

Room #2

Mango and small cakes + several bottles of mineral water were provided in room.

Some pictures of the different lobbys (historical and Opera wings), pool, bars, restaurants

As usual, you can have free breakfast, afternoon tea/cakes and evening cocktails. In the evening, you have a great choice (see pictures of the drink menu). You can have a free flow of good quality champagne if you wish and the staff is proactive to serve you.

On the food side to go with your drinks, there is a nice buffet and they also bring you some excellent warm finger food plates.

For BF, here are pictures of the buffet and you can of course order eggs, pancakes, etc (menu available).

I mentioned above that this place is an historical one in Hanoi, have witnessed many tragic events and have hosted plenty of very famous people (singers, presidents, prime mnisters and other very high profile persons). Very interestingly, there is a bomb shelter under the pool, which was rediscovered a couple of years ago during some renovation work. I learned that in our favourtite forum ;-) and so I enquired with our majordome at the lounge if we could visit it. He immediately checked and confirmed us for the following day. We were about 10 persons for the visit which lasts 1 hr. The visit of the shelter itself lasts 10 min max but the guide explains plenty of historical facts of the hotel and this was very interesting to listen to.

Check-out at the lounge was rapid and the hotel was keen on storing our luggage for 2 days while we were going to the Halong bay  and allowing us to travel light for the cruise on the Dragon Legend 2 (Indochina junk).

Overall, a super top stay in a great Sofitel. Great service and excellent Platinum/VIP treatment. A very highly recommendable hotel.