The catch at Hôtel Métropole Monte-Carlo

The hotel sells three room categories and none of them is sold with a sea view. The Deluxe Premium Room, the entry category, is 22 to 27 square metres on the second and third floors with, in the hotel's own words, various views of the city or the Allée de Toscane. The Deluxe Room is 23 to 33 square metres and the Prestige Room 32 to 44, both with the same two outlooks. Among the junior suites only the Prestige Junior Suite lists the Mediterranean as one of three possible outlooks, which is a lottery rather than a promise.

The first category where the sea is guaranteed is the Deluxe Sea View Suite, 56 square metres on a high floor with the Casino and the Odyssey pool below it. Above that the Prestige Suite on the top floor is sold as sea or lane, and only the Carré d'Or Suite, with its 110 square metre terrace, puts the Casino, its gardens and the Mediterranean in one window.

The Odyssey terrace is the reason many people book here, and the hotel's own page says who it is for: hotel guests and members of the Club Metropole Monte-Carlo. The Club's brochure prices membership at 8,000 euros a person a year for three pool visits, 11,000 for unlimited access and 16,000 for unlimited access with special lounger-booking terms, so on a July afternoon you are sharing the loungers with members who have paid for them, and the top tier gets first call. The pool is open 7 am to 8 pm, heated seawater all year, and it is the hotel's only shared outdoor space; in high summer loungers are hard to come by.

The kitchen beside it changes with the season. Zia at Odyssey cooks Italian there from April to September, from breakfast by the pool to dinner under the stars, and the Odyssey restaurant's own page gives lunch only, 12:15 pm to 5 pm.

The hotel closed in December 2024, reopened in May 2025 and unveiled its first 45 rethought rooms and suites by Jacques Garcia that year. Its own press release names the five categories they fall into: the Deluxe Premium Room and the Prestige Room, the Deluxe Premium and Prestige Junior Suites, and the Deluxe Premium Suite, on the second and third floors. The Prestige Junior Suite page adds that its suites sit on different floors, so one off the second or third may be older. Everything else, the Deluxe Room, the Deluxe Junior Suite and the suites above them, is the 2004 Garcia scheme, now two decades old. Guests report the difference: the new rooms draw praise, the untouched ones draw comments about tired carpets and sparse furnishing for the price, and some report noisy air conditioning. They rate the location above the rooms and the rooms above the value, and the gap between them is mostly this paragraph.

The food is a reason to come, and the calendar can defeat it. Les Ambassadeurs by Christophe Cussac, two stars in the 2026 guide, serves dinner only, 7:30 pm to 10:30 pm, Thursday to Monday on the hotel's own page, so a Tuesday and Wednesday stay misses it entirely, and elegant evening attire is required. Yoshi, the Japanese room, is Wednesday to Saturday only, lunch 12:15 pm to 1:45 pm and dinner 7:30 pm to 10:30 pm, and the 2026 Michelin selection lists it without the star it lost in the 2025 guide. The Lobby Bar is the only room that keeps hotel hours, 8 am to 1 am every day, with lunch from 11 am and dinner from 6:30 pm.

The hotel does not price breakfast anywhere, so check what your rate includes before you book.

The Spa Metropole by Guerlain opened in 2025 with ten treatment rooms, a hammam, sauna, cold plunge and a Technogym room, open 7 am to 9 pm, and its brochure prices it: the signature Monaco Glow facial is 350 euros for an hour and a half, a deep muscular massage 250 euros for an hour and 320 for ninety minutes. The hotel's site does not say whether the heat facilities are included for room guests, and the Club brochure sells access to the same Heat Experience to members, so ask at check-in rather than assume.

The address is a street, not the square: 4 avenue de la Madone, which the hotel calls just metres from the Place du Casino, and it is. But the station is a 15 minute walk by the hotel's own reckoning, Nice airport is 30 km and under an hour by car on the same page, 45 minutes by the hotel's limousine, and the hotel has no beach and no beach club of its own.