Hotel les Hautes Roches

Having spent a week travelling across France and Spain, sadly, from an accommodation perspective alone, this hotel is in the dark ages - which is why I have titled our review as 'a game of two halves'. As you approach the hotel you immediately fall in love with the property. The road side 'wow factor' is immense, as is the welcome at reception. However, we paid EUR 505 for a "A Deluxe double Troglodyte room, built into the cliffs" and were seriously disappointed the moment the door to our room was opened. Unfortunately, despite arriving early, we were provided what I believe is the family room - whilst it was huge and the bathroom, perfectly clean, the decor was dated beyond imagination and the bed with its bizarre bolsters would have been dated in the 1980's. As I said, this was a game of two halves, which is why I have provided a 3* rating rather than a 1* rating. The staff were very welcoming, if a little distracted pool side e.g. we sat by the pool for three hours trying to get drinks but no staff attended the pool as they had an event on that evening - this led us to consider cancelling our 'gastronomic' dinner reservation however, thankfully we did not, as the experience of sitting on the terrace, over looking the Loire, whilst having a phenomenal (if very expensive) meal, was a treat. Breakfast was excellent. Personally, I think I would not be able to recommend the accommodation to friends unless they to stay in a different room - I cannot vouch for the others, but the images of rooms online seem far better than the room we were provided - hopefully the others are up to date but for the cost of potentially 2 nights income at these rates, the room could be completely overhauled and made 'contemporary' in design and you have to wonder why this has not been done already... As mentioned, we were travelling across France and Spain, so stayed in 5 hotels in 8 days, the rest were amazing and did not disappoint at this price point - which I would say is 'top end' for a one night stay with supper - all in I think our bill was circa EUR 840 with room, dinner and breakfast - so not cheap at all, but the room felt like it ought to have been a EUR 100 room experience, and certainly not EUR 505...

Excellent staff, professional friendly service. Great food and great wine list. Not sure about our cave room. The bed was also very hard. The room was enormous but wasn't cosy and the furnishings didn't really help. There was also no shower. We would go back and enjoyed our stay.