Hotel Quality Domaine De Kerloc'h Gwen - Combrit, France 

Booking late for a family holiday in France in August - doh! - one has a pretty limited choice, but this place was doing online offers and was well reviewed on this site, so we decided to give it a go. Do we regret it? No. It has clear virtues. You get a vast amount of accommodation for your money, all clean and bright (if not very characterful). The situtation is nice too. It’s in very pretty, green countryside. Quiet too at night (as long as you're not upset by the very distant thump-thump-thump of an unimaginative disco somewhere in the distance, that only seems to have one CD). There’s also a clean and attractive pool. Breakfast is very good. What’s missing, though, is any feeling of personality at all, despite some very charming individual members of staff. It’s as if the management just has some blind spots. The dining room, for example, has all the charm of a middle management lunch room, which is a shame as the food is actually very good and very good value. It also comes - well on our first and last night of trying it - very very slowly, even with children. And in some ways the place is rather like a B&B (or, more accurately, a DB&B) than a hotel. There is no service of anything during the day, and the bar is only intermittently (and amateurishly) staffed at night. So you never get any real feeling that the place has a heart. And you can’t get drinks by the pool (even water) so it never becomes the sort of natural social centre it would otherwise be. So, a good place - but you need to know what it isn’t as well as what it is.

Booking late for a family holiday in France in August - doh! - one has a pretty limited choice, but this place was doing online offers and was well reviewed on this site, so we decided to give it a go. Do we regret it? No. It has clear virtues. You get a vast amount of accommodation for your money, all clean and bright (if not very characterful). The situtation is nice too. It’s in very pretty, green countryside. Quiet too at night (as long as you're not upset by the very distant thump-thump-thump of an unimaginative disco somewhere in the distance, that only seems to have one CD). There’s also a clean and attractive pool. Breakfast is very good. What’s missing, though, is any feeling of personality at all, despite some very charming individual members of staff. It’s as if the management just has some blind spots. The dining room, for example, has all the charm of a middle management lunch room, which is a shame as the food is actually very good and very good value. It also comes - well on our first and last night of trying it - very very slowly, even with children. And in some ways the place is rather like a B&B (or, more accurately, a DB&B) than a hotel. There is no service of anything during the day, and the bar is only intermittently (and amateurishly) staffed at night. So you never get any real feeling that the place has a heart. And you can’t get drinks by the pool (even water) so it never becomes the sort of natural social centre it would otherwise be. So, a good place - but you need to know what it isn’t as well as what it is.