ibis budget Arles Palais des Congrès — Hotel in Arles

This is a hard one to review. Like Petra K below, I agree that this is not the ideal hotel for solo, car-less travellers; as a woman, I would not be happy to walk back to this hotel alone after dark. The hotel's suggested route into town is to cross the road over to the Antiquities Museum, and then follow the river into town. This was absolutely fine in the day time (with a few nice bits of street art along the way) but I would not do this alone at night, and even walking with my male partner this made me a bit nervous for the 30 metres or so where you walk under the overhead bridge (between housing and a car park). It was fine, and no one bothered us at any point, but the worry wasn't ideal for a holiday. You can see the part I mean if you go onto Google Satellite view and look near the hotel, with the car park marked 'electric vehicle charging station' - the bit you'll be aiming for is roughly where it says Tour de l'Echorchoir, so that massive bridge is what you'll be walking under.||||HOWEVER!||||This is otherwise a great hotel. We paid £40 per night for 3-7 September (via Accorhotels' own site), which is a bargain. The hotel is attached to the Ibis Styles so you get all the benefits of that, i.e. an outdoor unheated, decent-sized pool and a restaurant/bar with some nice looking food options. The staff were friendly, with largely very good English. The room is very basic, with no luxuries, but it is clean, functional, with good air-conditioning, a comfy bed, and we did not find the walls too thin. Some of the rooms in the other Ibis in the same complex are a bit... garish. Our room in the budget hotel was simply decorated in light blue, which was nice. There is a games corner for smaller children near reception. They have a free left luggage you can use, too, and this is behind a locked door. ||||If arriving on foot or with your own car - rather than a taxi - you have to press the bell to get the large gate to open. I've not seen anything like it before, where pedestrians have to come through a massive gate; I'm guessing that it is to stop people using their car park if they aren't staying at the hotel, but coupled with the walk under the bridge it did make me feel like this was not the best part of town. I mentioned above that I wouldn't be happy to walk back alone at night, so if I stayed here again by myself I'd get a taxi back each night. It would probably cost about 6 Euros one way, so that would make this hotel less of a bargain but probably still the best value you'll find.||||You can get the bus from right near the hotel if you cross to the Antiquity Museum car park (1 Euro per journey, 2.5 for a day ticket). Buses start relatively early, but finish too early to be helpful in the evening, maybe at about 7pm. The bus is clearly marked Gare SNCF on the front and it makes a few helpful stops through town on the way. The drivers we had were all very nice.||||Now the key question: would I stay here again? My answer is, it depends. If travelling as a pair on a budget, yes. If travelling alone on a budget, probably not, preferring to spend a bit less on other things like eating out and instead staying somewhere more central. The caveat to this would be possession of a car: it is a blessing for the world that I cannot drive, but if I was in Arles alone with a car then I probably would stay here as it is a relatively easy city to navigate by car (my partner drove us for a day) and the hotel has...

Really enjoyed our stay at the hotel, staff are lovely, breakfast great, dinner excellent, but a slight problem are thecroomsxare very very tired, the doors are battered and scratched, you have not even got into the rooms, suspicious looking stains on the carpets, and once inside the rooms are very dull, scruffy looking, but saying that the bed is comfy, shower hot, towels are AWFUL, but the cleaning done is excellent....why Ibis do not beleive that guests need to sit in a comfy chair in a four night stay is ridiculous, my neck from sitting on the bed is still stiff. And please 2 pillows that are at least decent, not just an inferior and cheap representation of a pillow..I would suggest you get a group of people to see just how liveable your hotel us..we were there for 4 nights working hard all day, exhausted we wanted to relax, this was not possible apart from our meal little to feel comfortable and relax for the evenings..the heating is way to inadequate too, boiling hot or freezing cold...this is not rocket science ..its the ART of comfort at an economic price, it can be done ..shouldnt be too hard..but although I criticise the room we had a good mattress and slept ok..your staff are a credit to your hotel..please please you have a great team, a good position take a...

This Ibis Budget hotel in Arles was very reasonably priced with warm, friendly and helpful staff. It turned out that we could walk into central Arles reasonably easily from the hotel which supplied us with tourist map of the town. Dinner on our first night could be found close at hand in a good quality pizza restaurant. The following evening, after an entrancing day looking at the town's various attractions, we found another good restaurant no more than a five minute walk away from the hotel. From a cycle friendly point of view the staff found a secure place for us to store our bikes and as this was the first 2-3 days of a month long ride across France, helpfully we were able to access a nearby (7 minutes walk) Decathalon which had pretty much everything we might have wanted. |All in all, I would highly recommend this hotel it was perfect...