French bike-friendly hotels

[Dursleycyclist]

Looking around for hotels in France that are bike safe and bike friendly. Looking in particular at any that folk may know about in Calais, Rouen or Alencon. Either with very secure parking or on-site bike storage. Thanks.

[mjr]

People took their bikes into the rooms of B&B Hotel (a hotel chain, not a B&B!) in Calais.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=121611 has some other recent chain reports.

[Dursleycyclist]

thanks - yes have used B&B before and done just that. It can be hit and miss which rooms you get. We are travelling down with bikes on the car so will have a couple of bikes and dog so looking for hotels that either are safe to leave bikes outside on the bike rack or provide some secure storage.

[Nigel]

In the past, I've just emailed a few candidate hotels and asked. They're usually smaller hotels in small towns/villages. Many usually have a solution, such as a hotel garage, or an outside lockable storeroom which can be used.

- Nigel

[robing]

Many of the budget chains are quite happy for you to take the bike in to the room - F1, Premiere Classe, Ibis Budget.
I've stayed at the Alencon F1 with my bike. These hotels usually have a keypad entry so no key.
When you book, you receive an email with your keycode which lets you in to the hotel front door and also your room.
Many of these hotels only have reception manned at certain hours, so if you check in outside these times, just wheel your bike through.

[eileithyia]

F1 we just took the tandem into the room as described above... no one bothered about it.

[whoof]

In addition to the chain hotels as mentioned I stayed a dozens of small independent hotels in France all of which found a garage, spare room etc for us to leave our bikes.

[simonhill]

I stayed in 11 budget hotels this summer while following the WW1 battlefront. All accommodated my bike, in room, store room or garage, etc. Never a problem.

Might be a tight squeeze in an F1 type room with 2 people and 2 bikes.

I did check out the hotels I used via pictures on booking.com to see if they were likely to have room for storage - some city centre hotels can be a bit cramped. Most of my hotels were in town outskirts.

I would think dog might be more of a problem than the bikes - sorry, but I'd use a room after someone had a bike in it, not so happy with a dog.

[pga]

Over the years we have never had anyproblems in finding secure under cover storage for bikes in French hotels of every type from one offs to chains. France is a cycling friendly nation.