The W Barcelona’s spinnaker-shaped tower sits where Barcelona gives way to the sea at the end of Barceloneta beach and, along with the Sagrada Familia, it’s one of the city’s most recognisable silhouettes. 473 rooms and suites all offer uninterrupted views across Barcelona’s skyline or the open sea, while the facilities are a resort in themselves: ranging from the WET Deck with multiple pools and terraces, Salt Beach Club, to its vast AWAY Spa complex. Dining runs from Noxe, the 26th-floor Japanese restaurant and sky bar, to the Peruvian COYA and the grill cooking at Fire. The property is currently in the middle of a multi-million renovation programme that began in October 2025. It is programmed to run until 2027, with the redesign of guest rooms and suites between the seventh and twenty-fifth floors already completed. Ross from The Luxury Editor checked into one of the newly finished guestrooms to see what the next chapter looks like. Read on to discover more.
Catalonia, Barcelona, Ciutat Vella
W Barcelona
(5 stars)We’re no strangers to the W brand, in fact we love it, having followed it around the world, from the W Edinburgh, whose opening we watched from our home city, to the W London on Leicester Square, the W Bangkok in Thailand, the W Ibiza on Santa Eulalia’s beachfront, and the W Brisbane in Australia, And every time I fly into Barcelona, I can pick out its sail shape from the plane window long before I touch down. So it’s a delight to finally stay in this iconic building that I’ve spent years flying past.
W Barcelona was the first opening for the brand in Western Europe in 2009, and it’s fair to say it’s somewhat of a juggernaut. Cruise ship-like in stature, guests enter through a giant lobby that rises multiple levels, opening up to a covered skylight at the top. On one side, a bank of reception podiums deals with the ever-relentless throng of guests checking in and out, alongside a concierge team ready to assist with guest experiences. In the other direction, grab a cocktail in the W Lounge or have lunch or dinner in FIRE, which looks out poolside. Beyond that, you can access the guest-only WET Deck and various pool areas or head down to SALT Restaurant & Beach Club, which connects with Baceloneta beach.
WET Deck
I arrived an hour before the official check-in time, and my room wasn’t quite ready, so the reception team handed me a couple of drink vouchers, which I happily used at the WET Deck. This is the hotel’s pool terrace; here you can laze the day away on a daybed or in a cabana looking out across to the beach and sea below. The midday sun combined with each sip of my Estrella beer sent me into an ever deeper state of relaxation as I zoned into the mellow Ibiza tune played by the pool DJ. By this point, I had completely forgotten it was time to check in when 3 pm quickly came around.
I thought the WET Deck was limited to one floor, which is extensive in itself, however, I later discovered tucked a floor above the WET Deck, is an additional infinity pool and sun deck, along with a yoga deck, which I saw some people undertaking, but that looked far too strenuous for the summer Catalan sunshine, so I thought to myself, I’ll stick to the wine drinking instead!
Location
The hotel stands on Plaça Rosa dels Vents, an islet of reclaimed land at the far tip of Barceloneta beach, where the port meets the open sea. You have the entire sweep of Barcelona’s city beach, which follows a boardwalk running towards the Olympic Port, and behind that, you are fifteen minutes on foot from the narrow grid of old Barceloneta, which is quite fascinating to explore and also a great way to cool off, with its narrow streets and high buildings offering shade and acting like a natural air conditioner. Public transport is fairly limited around the hotel. There is a metro station around 20 minutes’ walk away from the hotel, so stick with taxi’s whcih will take around 20 minutes to get you to the Gothic Quarter, and 35/40 minutes to the airport, depending on how busy the roads are.
Rooms & Suites
All 473 rooms and suites point outwards, which sounds obvious until you remember the majority of Barcelona’s city hotel rooms are interior-facing into a lightwell, so here there is no such thing as a bad view. Lower floors take in the boardwalk and the beach, and the higher you climb the building, the more the sea fills your view. The redesign of La Vela’s rooms and suites is the work of the New York studio Rockwell Group, responsible for the recent renovation of W New York Union Square and W Hollywood. Founder David Rockwell has described the aim as reflecting Barcelona’s own coexistence of architecture, landscape and everyday life, and the design drawing on the story of Isla de Maians, a small island detached from the city’s coastline for centuries before eventually merging with it. The new rooms conceived as a calmer, more intimate balance to the hotel’s high-energy public spaces. The palette shifts by category too, blues and whites for the standard rooms evocative of the Mediterranean horizon, sand, ochre and soft yellow in the suites, with subtle peach accents reserved for the most exclusive categories.
The renovation has brought a grown-up change to W’s playful room naming convention. The Wonderful, Fabulous, and WOW monikers have been changed to a more subtle naming ladder, which runs from Cozy through Premier and Superior rooms, with Sky variants from the tenth floor. Suites follow the same logic, climbing from Studio and Corner Suites through the terraced W and Onada Suites, Onada being Catalan for wave, a nod to the building’s silhouette, to a two-bedroom Loft Suite and, at the very top, a three-bedroom Penthouse in place of the old Extreme WOW. Here, we can see the brand consciously trading the gimmick for maturity.
My Room During My Stay
I stayed in room 1907, a Premier Sky Room on the 19th floor. If you are familiar with the current format of W Hotel interiors, which feature high gloss, walls of mirrors, and colours delivered from mood lighting, all designed to give rooms a hedonistic youth club vibe, this has very much been sunset in the new design. The palette in this room is sand, cream, and pale oak, warmed with brushed copper and bouclé fabrics across the walls and the window chaise. The layout of the room is different to the regular format, rather than the bed running down one side wall, it sits in the centre of the room, and behind its headboard, a writing desk complete with a stack of Taschen books waiting be leafed through. At the window, a small lounge area with a chaise and table lets you have your morning Nespresso while looking out to the sea beyond.
The new interiors have neautralised the coulour pallette, but the W’s trademark bright pops of colour haven’t been completely abandoned, now existing as highlights throughout the rooms interiors, like the stonework in the bathroom’s Belfast sink carved from veined blue granite. The bathroom itself cleverly sits within a pod which can be completely closed for privacy or fully opened to let the room space flow continuously. Frosted-glass doors conceal the shower wet room along with a separate WC. Toiletries come from MOMO, these are amazing. It’s the yellow melon extract shower gel I first experienced when I reviewed the W London, and I have never experienced anything quite as fragrant since.
On the table, I found a printed card from the hotel’s W Insider addressed to me. This is the brand’s take on a concierge, with a direct WhatsApp line for restaurant bookings and recommendations throughout my stay, along with plenty of complimentary water in cartons illustrated with the hotel’s own sail-shaped silhouette.
A cream lacquer minibar carries full bottles of Grey Goose, Bombay Sapphire, Patrón and a Marqués de Riscal Rioja along with a Nespresso machine and kettle. The snack drawer is packed with Catalan essentials, Torres olive oil crisps and Sant Tomás chocolate, and below that, a refrigerator drawer is brimming with additional soft drinks and alcoholic drinks. And at the entrance, a large twin-sided wardrobe has plenty of storage space.
There is a nightly turndown service, and post dinner, I came back and the curtrains were drawn, lights dimmer and slippers laid next to the bed.
Food & Drink
The hotel is an extremely popular destination for dining for both hotel and non-hotel guests. NOXE, the W’s Japanese restaurant and cocktail bar is located 26 stories taking up an entire floor of the hotel and transforms from dining into a club as the evening progresses. On the first floor, COYA needs little introduction to anyone who has eaten at any of their glamorous outposts (read our review of COYA Marbella), the contemporary Peruvian brand serving ceviches, tiraditos and pisco. The W Lounge in the lobby offers cocktails along with a DJ. Down at beach level, SALT is the hotel’s beach club with a restaurant and cocktail terrace and back up at the lobby, FIRE is the hotel’s open-flame Mediterranean restaurant,
During my stay I ate at FIRE, a large indoor restaurant which then opens out to the WET Deck with tables facing the pool. Maximising my time in the sun, I opted for a poolside table, the meal began with an amuse-bouche of chilled sweetcorn soup with feta and piquillo pepper, then bread with whipped charcoal butter. Whilst I looked over the menu, I opted for a Margarita cocktail to start the evening in style.
For starters, I chose the tartare of tuna, studded with orange and toasted almonds and scattered with samphire and micro herbs, served curled around a pool of ajoblanco. For mains an easy choice, the fillet steak simply and unfussy, charred from the chacrol grill and dusted and a pot of chimichurri, to dunk each bit of the fillet into.
As the night progressed, the setting of the sun kept changing the lighting minute by minute, making the view magical to watch. I asked if this was a routine sunset or a one-off, and I discovered it’s pretty much guaranteed each evening during the summer months.
To finish, I enjoyed a little bit of theatre for dessert: what looked like a green apple, glossy and bright, but was in fact a perfectly formed cake complete with a chocolate stem.
Breakfast
Next morning after a thoroughly deep sleep, I went down for breakfast which is served both in FIRE and Salt so you can mix it up if you are staying for more than one night. The menu is extensive; I opted for eggs Royal with smoked salmon, and topped up my plate with some buffet items, spotting the champagne corner as I wandered around the buffet.
AWAY Spa
My time at the hotel was limited, but I did manage time for a quick dip in the subterranean AWAY Spa, which has various saunas, steam rooms and jacuzzis’ alongside a treatment menu, Beauty Bar, salon, gym and pool.
Final Thoughts
The W Barcelona is a big, buzzing, high-energy hotel and we just love it. If you are looking for a beachfront presence combined with a city-break destination, this hotel ticks all the boxes. Its refreshed interiors show a broader evolution of the W brand and we cannot wait to see this rolled out across the entire hotel.
