ibis Plymouth — Restaurant in Plymouth

What an odd little place - tucked just away from the main road on the fringes of a retail / industrial area - not is not quite what I have in mind when I think "IBIS".||It is more of a motel by design, rather than a traditional hotel - the rooms are all directly accessed from paths and walkways and are separate from the main building which houses the reception and bar area. My room faced the car park and the main road but noise was not as issue - apart from some wannabe daredevil motorcyclists one evening who luckily just passed along quickly.||The room was interesting. As the rooms all face onto a walkway, the only window also faced onto the walkway. So if you needed any privacy the curtains need to be drawn, making the room dark - they were effective at cutting out the light. But they looked old and tired and I did notice a number of rooms have blinds now replacing the curtains.||The room itself was adequate rather than large but the bed was comfortable. The decoration was, in my view, idiosyncratic with some odd light for the style and size of the room. However they all worked. The bathroom appears to have been modernised recently and the shower was effective although a 'grab handle' in the shower would have been useful. ||If the room decor could be refreshed this would have been a very pleasant room. ||The reception area and bar / dining area were all clean and worked well - just one oddity. The self service breakfast operated on a 'one-way' system to prevent customers approaching from both ends. However the first thing on the counter are the spreads, jams and marmalades before you've picked up a plate. Then comes the actual selection of continental & cooked breakfast items. Then came the bread & toast at the other end (with croissants hidden round the corner!). It would just make life a tad easier if the butter etc. were presented next to the bread & toast at than end. I know, pernickety but sometimes it's the little things. ||Lastly the staff were unfailingly polite & helpful which goes a long way in the...

If we return to the Plymouth area we will definitely stay here and we wouldn't hesitate to recommend this hotel.

With the world turned upside down at the moment our holiday this year was 10 nights in Devon instead of our usual continental destination. We chose this hotel mainly for its ideal location on the outskirts of Plymouth giving us easy access into historic Plymouth as well as easy access to Dartmoor and the attractive villages. Also the drive across to Westward Ho! and Dartington crystal was reasonable.

The hotel itself was clean and comfortable with very easy access. The service was very good and the staff were extremely helpful, friendly and very welcoming. As we are getting on in years check in changed us to a ground floor room with easy access to our car.

The bar area and restaurant were well decorated and comfortable as was the lounge area. Clearly during these strange times distancing and Covid regulations were over-riding considerations but the staff worked very well within the statutory restrictions. Overall we did not feel worried about how things were being done. We had booked B&B, opting for the buffet breakfast rather than the full cooked. It came with a pot of porridge and a jug of hot water to put in it, croissant with butter and jam, breakfast biscuits, yoghurt, an apple and a drink, I opted for the coffee. In the event we also used the restaurant for our evening meals as it had a good choice of very good food and we could have wine without then having to drive back to the hotel.

The refurbishment of the rooms had been put back because of Covid problems but we found our room satisfactory, clean and comfortable with an efficient shower. We had seen revues that said that the rooms could get a bit hot so we took a fan with us and found it useful on three particularly hot days, a minor point.

We had also seen revues that said that the hotel was near busy roads causing traffic noise but we did not...

Poor is for the overall stay. If I was reviewing the staff it would be 5.

The room had a damp smell to it and was very tired and only had a shower when I was led to believe that there were baths in each room. The shower screen was fixed so you couldn't actually turn the shower on without being drenched in the initial spurt of cold water.

We ate in the bar and were disappointed, we had a gammon and a fish and chips, the fried egg with the gammon was practically raw, what my mother would have called 'snotty' and the chips were very dry, some quite hard. Also, you had to have chips, it was chips or nothing, a vegetable option would have been nice (or would it).

This didn't give us much hope for breakfast and we found that as expected the breakfast wasn't up to much. It was a buffet so there was plenty and you could have as much as you liked. Good points, the bacon and sausage were tasty, bad points, the beans were cold, it was almost as if they had been poured into the pot straight from the can, the scrambled egg was equally cold, the hash browns soggy and the mushrooms all shrivelled and dry and appallingly unwashed, there was still dirt on them. Added to this the half a cup of luke warm water which was dispensed from the drinks machine to make tea and the whole experience was quite demoralising.

This could be such a lovely place with it's individual chalet type rooms with just a little TLC and a decent chef.

We would stay again but only if we needed an overnight stay and on this experience we wouldn't be...