Hotel Spa - Au Charme Rabelaisien

We LOVED our entire experience at this hotel. The staff were warm and welcoming. The room was LOVELY, charming and clean. Great amenities. Adorable building and courtyard. We had a view of the Amboise chateau from our suite. We will be back!

Thank you to the staff at Hotel Au Charme Rabelaisien for a perfect few days in Amboise before going to Paris. After entering the beautiful lobby area, our first moment in the hotel was drinking a glass of wine in the beautiful courtyard. This became the daily ritual before getting ready for dinner! The two staff we met were so friendly, helpful with restaurant suggestions, transportation and excursion advice and arranging, and just really nice to talk to during our stay. Our room on the top floor, with it's own staircase, was perfect - the bed was so comfortable, the room was peaceful and extremely spacious to relax with a drink. It was nice walking down the stairs and throughout the hotel as it's a beautiful space to be in decorated with art, colour and historical ambience. We loved breakfast each morning. We prefer this hotel's style of fewer but nicely laid out items of higher quality. Fruit, coffee, cheeses, jams, bread, the sweet courtyard and friendly staff - perfect start to each morning. Amboise was the highlight of our trip to France and our experience at Hotel Au Charme Rabelaisien made it exceptional.

This hotel looks very nice in the photos but in person it is not how it looks at all. In our room, which was either a prestige terrace or a prestige garden, the carpet was dirty, the shower floor had some black grout (mold) and our terrace was dirty and had mold on the door mat. Our friends room was worse, it smelled bad, the air conditioner was not working, it had no WiFi, both of the rooms were not pretty like depicted on the internet. The grounds are very unkept, lots of dead plants and in much need of a clean up. I do not understand how this property has such a high rating. The staff is rude and offers very little help in fixing anything. Read the negative reviews and believe them. We paid a lot for these rooms and they were absolutely not worth it. Also look at the hotel managers replies to all the negative reviews. She is very defensive and blames everything on the reviewer. She says she’s not surprised at all by your review and then points out all their positive reviews. She will do it with this one too I’m sure. They take no responsibility at all for any short comings. A good business will apologize for any problems, invite you to come back and hopefully try to fix the issues. I would absolutely not recommend staying here.

Let's start with the positive things: Au Charme Rabelaisien is a beautiful old boutique hotel with nice and big rooms, it's conveniently located in the city center but it's still quiet and you have a parking place on the spot. The breakfast is also good compared to the usual French breakfast in other hotels. What spoiled our stay was the fact that the heating in the bathroom did not work and it's not nice to take a shower in a cold room with November temperatures outside. When I informed the reception I was told on the first day that we just don't know how to switch the heating on. On the second day they realized that it was really broken and all I got was ' luckily it's not so cold these days, so just leave the bathroom door open and the room will heat up with the bedroom's temperature'. Only that in the bedroom the heating also worked very poorly although we had it full on ... The second thing to warn about is the sauna: You pay 35 Euros for an hour for which you get individual access to the sauna and a jacuzzi in a very tiny room. There is a shower but no opportunity to relax somewhere on a bed, all you have is actually one table with two chairs separated by a door from the breakfast room. And it was cold in that room as well. I would not have bothered writing this review if at our check-out we would have had an excuse, just a simple 'We are sorry for the inconvenience with the heating' would have been enough. But nothing came although I mentioned the issue once more, this was disappointing.

Lovely Boutique Hotel-about 10 rooms -in Amboise in the Loire Velley A perfect home base from which to tour the valley. Great location-3 blocks to the center of town. Rooms are decent size, King bed with desk and a very nice sitting area. Nice mixture of antique furnishings with modern. Bathrooms are new and also nicely sized with large shower and a tub. We had a room on the third floor in the back of the hotel overlooking the garden and pool with views of the Chateau Royal Amboise. Excellent maid service in the morning. A wonderful buffet breakfast is served at 17.50 Eu per person, but you can easily walk into town and eat at one of the wonderful cafes which typically open around 9:00. Sylvie, the manager was wonderful and attended to all our needs. if yuou come in your own car, parking is a little tricky. There are public lots and spaces all over town but you have to find a spot by yourself. There is no real off street parking for the hotel itself. We stayed for five days and would stay again. Some of the rooms are a little smaller. When you book be sure to ask the size of the room. They are prices naccordingly.

This charming hotel of 10 rooms only was the base for our family trip to the Loire valley castles for 6 nights this July 2023. The manager is very kind: we had to cancel one room last moment, and according to their booking rules we would have had to pay the full amount of the room. However, they were able to book the same room with other guests, so they charged us only for one night. That was really a sign of how great they all were. Rooms were clean, with beautiful décor and new, renovated showers and good air conditioning. Toiletries and towels were clean and abundant. The hotel had a small but clean pool (we did not use it), beautiful garden and grounds and most importantly a closed garage easily accessible from the back of the hotel by remote control, with wide parking spots, a real perk in this busy tourist town in summer. Breakfast was excellent as well, with a buffet and choice of eggs to be made at the moment. We really enjoyed our stay, would return there any time. Thank you ACR!