Le Grand Large, Belle-Ile-En-Mer

Gorgeous property including impeccable gardens and a small forest. Conscientious and friendly staff. Large tastefully decorated beautiful rooms (very clean and neat). This is the kind of place you don't want to leave. Located approximately 35 min. walk outside of Honfleur. You can walk or bike to town but there is some elevation to consider.

On the positive side first. The hotel has a superb position, staff were amiable and welcoming. The food provided was of a high standard. We have stayed in many similar hotels - this is our 7th break this year. We stayed for 6 days and luckily, the weather was excellent. The room was advertised as a room with a view of the garden and a terrace with a sea view. The terrace was shared with other rooms and the sea view was non-existent from the seats by our room. There were no comfortable chairs in our room. If we wanted to stay inside we could only sit on the bed. There was no fridge, no curtain on the windows, nowhere to place suitcases and no real storage. There were three wooden lockers which had come out of some sports facility - they even had numbers on them! The room was extremely hot at night and the only way of cooling down was to open the door. Another thing that surprised us - we booked demi-pension and there was no choice offered. You had to have whatever was proposed.

Our first visit since the merger with Castel Clara was a sharp disappointment. While the staff present is committed, every single bit of the new Grand Large shows that it is all about cost minimisation and margin maximisation. Nothing of the erstwhile boutique spirit has been maintained, except the location. Grand Large is now merely an annex to Castel Clara. While the rooms are what they are, some more attention to detail would be helpful (bathroom amenities, writing utensils, drying stands for towels?). Also, there are only dark night curtains affixed (no transparent ones) which leaves you completely exposed on the 1st floor unless you choose to completely darken your room by day. The breakfast is purely functional, tables are arranged with a cup and nothing else while plates need to be collected by guests themselves either from a low shelf (bending, almost kneeling required) or from a high shelf where you first need to take out the entire lot. The food selection is uninspired and some of the (small..) pains au chocolat clearly have seen several days in their life. While there is some cheese (in rectangular slices) it seems to come from some supermarket rather than presenting local foods (this also goes for meat, sausage, honey,..) There is one single person attending breakfast and the organisation is clearly geared to get as many guests „processed“ with as little human, food and dish effort as possible. Also, the terrace tables are systematically not prepared such as to suggest to guests to remain inside to facilitate cleaning once they‘re finally gone. Altogether uninviting and anonymous. This may be ok in a mass tourist place, but that would not come at close to 300 EUR per night. Grand Large will not see us again, alas. And this downgrade is exclusively based on senior management decisions, not the staff on the ground, to be clear.

This was my second trip to Le Grand Large, and I enjoyed being there as much as before. With a beautiful view of the sea from my room and the fresh ocean air blowing in, it was a restorative time away. The staff are friendly and professional, going out of their way to meet even the smallest demand. Highly recommended.