The two-rooms-in-Europe problem

Most American families travel internationally without realizing how much harder it is to find proper family-of-four hotel rooms in Europe. American hotels: two queens in one room, $400/night, kids in one bed and parents in the other, problem solved. European hotels: doubles or kings, one bed per room, period. No two-double-bed rooms.

This means a family of four needs two rooms. Which means: at a $2,000/night luxury property, you're paying $4,000/night. Four nights = $16,000. For sleep.

The workaround: skip the $2K/night luxury places entirely. Go to a smaller, well-designed boutique where two rooms costs about what one room costs at the luxury property. Save $10,000+. Spend it on the dinners.

Why 9 Confidentiel specifically

A 27-room boutique inside a 17th-century building on a quiet side street in the 3rd. The rate worked out to about $1,125/night for two rooms, four nights, $4,500 total. (Roughly half what one suite at a $2K+ hotel would have cost.)

The design: well done. Not trying-too-hard French-rustic, not anonymous-modern. The kind of room you don't notice because nothing is wrong with it. Beds are comfortable, the soundproofing is real, the bathrooms are well-equipped, breakfast is included.

Need a few specifics from you to make this review concrete: exact room configuration you booked (two adjoining? two separate?), what you thought of the breakfast, anything that surprised you in a good or bad way once you arrived.

The Marais decision

My wife works in design. She wanted a beautiful neighborhood — not the most touristy part of town, but central enough to walk to most things. The Marais delivered all three: Rue des Rosiers and the old Jewish quarter, Place des Vosges five minutes away, the Picasso Museum walking distance, every metro line accessible. The kind of neighborhood that's both photogenic and functional.

The alternative neighborhoods we considered — Pigalle, the 6th, Latin Quarter — traded walkability for either more local-feeling neighborhoods or lower price points. For four nights and a young family, walkability wins. You're paying for the steps you don't have to take.

i.
Photo · The street at dusk or a Marais courtyard
[ Photo: Show the neighborhood, not the lobby. ]

What you give up

To be honest about what 9 Confidentiel is not:

  • Not a spa hotel. There's no spa.
  • No famous bar. The hotel has a small lounge area, nothing more.
  • No celebrity concierge with reservation magic. (Honestly, we also tested Amex Platinum concierge for the hard reservations. They were no better than us at the actual booking work — see the companion piece on what Amex concierge can and can't actually do.)
  • No marble lobby. The lobby is small and tasteful.
  • No formal restaurant. Breakfast is served; lunch and dinner you go out.

If you need any of those things, 9 Confidentiel isn't your hotel. If you don't, it's a steal.

The framework that put us here

"Save on the hotel, spend on the dinners" — the full Paris dinner reasoning.

Read the dinners piece →

The framework

Save on the hotel. Spend on the dinners. The four-night, four-dinner Paris stretch we'd planned would run $5,000–$6,000 in food if done well. The luxury-hotel version of the same trip would have spent that on the rooms alone. We did both — by picking the right hotel.

9 Confidentiel isn't the hotel you brag about. It's the hotel you stay at so that you can brag about the dinners.