Very nice hotel. Slightly expensive. Good facitilites, and convenient location. Rooms are well sized and well decorated.

If your criteria are quality food and central location, I would thoroughly recommend this hotel. Breakfast was plentiful and delicious, lunch (including free flowing Moet), was lovely, and Saigon Saigon, the rooftop bar was cool! All were very reasonably priced, buffet was $48 for lunch inc. champagne, and a la carte was approximately $100 USD for two people.
Saigon Saigon, is an amazing bar, open shutters, couches, prompt table service and great food, well worth the trip to the ninth floor. It is pretty loud when they have a band though, so if you prefer it quiet, head up for lunch.
Rooms were very ordinary, certainly not as luxurious as Expedia etc would have you believe. The bathroom was showing a lot of wear and tear, water had corroded the wood, the bath/shower was really small, quite mouldy, and had an unattractive white shower curtain.
The pool was really nice; in fact the photos don’t really do it justice. The gym was well equipped and well resourced. The Spa also looked very nice, but I tried a local Spa instead (Armani) it was great!
All in all, I would recommend this hotel if you can get it for a reasonable rate. The facilities are excellent, but it is not (as other reviewers highlight) luxurious. If its luxury you seek, and you can afford it, I’d suggest the Hyatt across the road.

There exists no international standard in how hotels are rated in terms of how many stars it deserves. In our trip just ended visiting 8 different cities in Japan, Hong Kong, Macao, China, Cambodia and Vietnam and staying in 11 different hotels (2 of which, including Caravelle, were rated "5 Stars") in the duration, my wife and I were in a position to rate Caravelle vis-a-vis all the others we stayed in on this trip... and we have to say that Caravelle is not 5 Stars. I would say it's closer to 4 Stars and, in fact, was not as good as some of the 4-Star hotels we stayed in on this trip.

So what were the problems? As I said at the beginning, there are no standards to the hotel star classification system but Expedia and Travelocity describes 5 Stars as being luxurious, highest comfort and superlative/flawless guest services. This does not describe our experience at Caravelle.

Firstly, the thermostat in our room was faulty which made the room either too cold (because the A/C was on all the time) or too warm (when we had to turn off the A/C because it got too cold). We complained to the front desk, the staff were courteous and said they would look into it.

Next day, no change and we complained again and they sent a guy to our room to fix it. He pretended to fiddle with the thermostat switch for a few seconds and then said it was fixed! I said you didn't do anything, but he insisted otherwise. Needless to say, he lied and we had another cold night. We complained on checkout and they said they were sorry. I'm sorry, but just simply apologizing doesn't make it better given the 5-Star hotel rate were charged.

The room itself was average size, not big unless you're comparing to a 3-Star Tokyo hotel. The bathroom faucet was leaking on our first night but that was fixed by the next day. The hotel had all the facilities such as a spa, workout room, pool, restaurants, etc. Breakfast was very good. I tried to go to the business center to read a newspaper but the staff there said it was not possible. I think they just had fax/photocopying machines in there and not much else. Sorry, it's not a business centre.

However, at the end of the day, the hotel room was not comfortable due to the A/C problem and, other than saying sorry, Caravelle staff did nothing else to resolve the situation.

Caravelle is a solid 4 Stars in my books. If you're looking for a real 5-Star hotel, nearby Park Hyatt may be a better choice.

We traveled with a group of 4 families (17 people) from San Diego. Our second times in Saigon. We stayed at the Renaissance Riverside the last time. We stayed at the Sofitel in Dalat and Metropole in Hanoi. This one is a truly 5 stars experience from the minute we arrived to the day we left. The grand entrance, the superclean room with all the luxury items. The view is awesome (the river and the downtown) from the 19th floor and very quiet at night. The breakfast buffet is a feast with high quality food and service. The staff are very friendly and accomodate every need. The manager Xuan Bao is going extra mile in doing everything to make the trip complete. The hotel is in the middle of all the action and highlights of district 1 and within walking distance to everything. It has a very nice gym, pool and spa. We got very fast in-room internet and flat screen TV/DVD. We love this place and definitely will stay at this place again.