Domaine de Biar Hotel in Montpellier

A beautifully renovated hotel. The building is very well renovated - particularly the dinning room and the grounds. The pool area is beautiful and calm. The seating area in-front of the hotel is relaxing. The staff when we stayed were very helpful and welcoming.

The hotel passed on my contact details, without my permission, to an outside company that arranges trips. The company contacted me multiple times. The hotel should not be passing on details without permission.

We stayed in the Genesis room which is comfortable, large and spacious. It has a lovely view of the grounds and huge windows that let the light flood in. The bathroom is huge. However, it's poorly designed and not well maintained. The main shower didn't work properly - part of the faucet is hanging off and the lever to make the main shower head work is really stiff. We had to speak to reception, as we couldn't get the shower to work, and they said, "yes, the main shower head lever gets stiff" - so the hotel know about the shower issues but haven't done anything to remedy. There's a really powerful lower shower at body-level height - which can only be angled to the wall outside of the shower, making it impossible to use. It soaked some towels, floor and walls. Consequently, the bathroom has damp issues. The bathroom mirror is behind the wide sink area - making the mirror difficult to use if you're putting in contact lens or shaving. The massively tall sink is impractical for washing face or shaving - water splashes over the wide sink area and the sink cannot be plugged or filled, as it's so tall. The bathroom has been designed to look specular but in reality is quite annoying.

For part of our stay, we unfortunately had really loud guests with a large dog above our room who stayed up really late, and bounced a ball for the dog throughout the early hours. You can hear every move from the room above as there's no sound installation. If you're a light sleeper, suggest booking a room on the top floor.

Although the hotel is beautiful, I agree with other reviews - it's a bit grubby around the edges (dressing gowns - one had brown stains on them and the other had horse hair; towels got soaked due to dodgy shower set up, put them on the floor to be replaced but weren't; the balcony glass doesn't look like it's been cleaned in years; we used our glasses in the room and left them out to be replaced, but found them in the massive sink suggesting they hadn't been washed just rinsed; I saw the restaurant staff clean the floor with a cloth, didn't rinse the cloth, used the same cloth to wipe all the tables).

The restaurant is beautiful but the food is only ok - it's cooked to an average level, only one choice of dish at lunchtime and limited options in the evening (which made it a bit tricky for me as I have an allergy to one ingredient that appeared in two of the three evening dishes). There are better places to eat around the area - particularly in the nearby local small town. The hotel is relaxed about clients getting take away though. There's no pool-side snacks or light lunches, which is a real shame, as if you're having a pool day, you have drive out of the hotel grounds or eat the one choice of dish in the fancy hotel restaurant. I think the hotel is missing a trick here.

Hotel's check out is at 11am - which is fair enough. Our flight was at 7pm and it was incredibly hot, so we opted to spend our last hours by the pool. There's no facility to wash yourself after being at the pool, other than a make-shift outside shower at the side of the pool, with no shampoo, etc, and slightly see-through! The only other facility is a sink in the spa area.

Overall, although the staff are lovely, the building is beautifully renovated, the Genesis room inviting, given the hotel charges nearly 5* prices, I would expect it to be a bit more polished and have better amenities with things like light-lunch for poolside, to be really clean, the restaurant food to be really good, not to be disturbed by noise from the upstairs room, the shower to work, towels to be replaced.

Whilst visiting Montpellier, we stayed at Domaine de Biar for 2 nights. The Domaine looked beautiful on the outside. The receptionist was very friendly.

I do believe a stay at the Hotel is far too expensive for what it offers. The rooms (except for the suits) aren't nice at all. The cleaning wasn't thourough (still cobwebs and dust) and the breakfast was nice but not special.

When we left (I had payed upfront) the guy at the reception said that I still had to pay a small amount for the city tax. He had also charged me a forfeit of 40 euros for tips. This was standard he said but if i didn't want it, it could be removed. We paid more than 300 euro a night for a small room. Carrying our bags to the room wasn't offered nor was any other service when we stayed there. In France service is included. If the service had been exceptional the tip wouldn't have bothered me, but the fact that they charged it automatically and one had to ask explicitly to have it removed disgusted me.

Beautiful location, nice pool, love the calmness of the houses. It's really relaxing.

The hotel manager is great. Really welcoming, friendly, accommodating.

The massages my husband and I had were absolutely amazing.

But otherwise the service is not so great.

The room has quite a few spider webs and the windows have not been cleaned properly on the outside in ages.

And when they did clean the room, they left all dirty dishes and glasses in the room.

The service at the restaurant was not great either. The waiter was with quite an attitude.

We asked if it's possible to have an old fashioned and got told relatively rude that everything they have is in the menu.
I ordered a starter and a cheese platter which I wanted at the same time as my husband's main and was told that this was a "difficult" request.

I told in the restaurant booking that my husband is intolerant to eggplant and guess what he received as part of his main?

In the morning we asked for an almond latte and got told we should use the machine. But the machine is only loaded with normal milk...

My recommendation would also be to ask people if they smoke and then split the seating in two. As eating a really expensive dish surrounded with cigarette smoke really impacts the experience.