Le Cloître (Hôtel à Arles) — Hotel in Arles

Getting to the hotel is very, very difficult. Located a long way up an old narrow, poorly lit, street the hotel is opposite a crumbling wreck of a building with broken windows. Visually very off putting. ||||The only way to the hotel is on foot. Yet, when phoned the reception could not direct us to the hotel. The person did not even know where it is in relation to the tourist office. The position of the hotel is not that as shown on the hotel’s website, the info graphic is useless at showing its location. Be aware that this diagram is incorrect. We spent nearly two hours trying to locate it from this.||||We booked for parking, but the reception could not let us through the bollards that ban cars, other than residents’ vehicles, from the centre, and then could not direct us to the pre-arranged parking that the hotel offers. Even though reception was repeatedly phoned, they could not give directions to the hotel on foot or by car.||||On our visit, Thursday, the restaurant was not available, when we arrived at 8.30 pm. There was no provision for being able to obtain food, although the hotel's website says, 'Across the hotel stands the Épicerie of Le Cloître, a small multiple-function restaurant: it’s open for aperitifs with friends, for lunch and dinner.' This is not true: there was no evidence of a restaurant, bar or being able to obtain a drink of any sort. We were told it was closed. In fact, it looked like it had not been open at all that day or any day or evening for that matter. From the website, most days in the week it seems to close at 3pm.||||The locality of the hotel is shabby and dead and along the road from what appears to be a squat. The hotel is NOT a boutique hotel, as described on its website, with the ambience shown. In our opinion, the pictures shown on the website are, in our experience, misleading and not a reliable indication of what to expect when visiting the hotel. The website oversells this hotel. Our advice would be to find somewhere else to stay if you are contemplating going to the Le Cloitre...

While the staff at reception was very nice, that's about the only nice thing we can say about our experience at this hotel. ||We stayed in room 19 which backed onto an open space filled with very loud pidgeons that make noise day and night. Since there is no air-conditioning in the room, we had to leave the windows open (quite hot in Arles during our stay) which exacerbated the pidgeon noise and let bugs in as well. There is a ceiling fan that made a loud buzzing noise contributing further to us not being able to sleep well during our stay. We shared this information with the staff who acknowledged and validated these problems so they should not be surprised by this review.||Another issue was using the hairdryer affected the rest of the lights in the room. Lastly, for this type of hotel, the breakfast buffet was quite average.||All in all,definitely...

Hotel Le Cloitre exceeded our expectations and we recommend it for an enjoyable quiet stay in Arles. We found the staff was great; they responded to our emails addressing all of our questions. They arranged train pickup, recommendations for restaurants, along with address other requests we had. They always appeared to be interested in making certain we were enjoying our trip.||Hotel location was great; easy walking distance to attractions.||Room was very good. We had a junior suite. It was clean, large, and quiet.||Breakfast was the standard French breakfast; pastries, meats, cheeses, hard boiled egg, etc.||While the hotel is not a 5 star hotel; it is a great hotel and we would use it again the next time we are...