ibis budget Le Mans Centre

The rooms are spacious and have AC. As expected for the hotel name, breakfast is budget, served in a windowless basement room with a news channel always on. The staff are helpful, though not very mindful. I would've liked a warning that the surrounding streets were closed and the pavements dug up before I tried dragging my heavy suitcase through gravel pits in 37°C weather. As usual with Ibis, the room pricing is hard to make sense of. The first two nights were about 50€ each, then the last was 200€ for some reason, which left me feeling taken advantage of. Overall, it was OK.

The price was low, but the room was spotless and the bed was comfortable. The staff were excellent too.

The roadworks around the hotel have apparently been going on for at least a year, and nobody told us before we booked or arrived. In the front yard, a generator on the fence, maybe for the heating or air conditioning, roared through the whole night. It sounded jammed and close to falling apart. The room was the messiest I've ever seen in an Ibis, and honestly the most frightening stay I've had at one. There were only two small, thin pillows on the double bed, and my neck has hurt for four days. The bathroom had two paper cups and nothing else, no soap for washing hands or even a toilet brush.

Breakfast was pretty decent, and the rooms were what you'd expect from an Ibis Budget, basic but with what you need. The location was especially handy: it's a 10-minute walk to the Tourist Office Tram Stop, then around 20-30 minutes by tram to the 24hr Circuit. A few more minutes on foot gets you to the modern centre and the Plantagenet City, with its shops, bars and restaurants.