Formule 1, Abbeville

...day-trippers. I'd heard of Formule 1 before, and seen many of their hotels around on previous journeys through France, so decided to check them out.

Background

Formule 1 hotels can be seen across France, and are also available in other European countries, including the UK, Germany and Spain among others. For those of you travelling slightly further afield, there are Formule 1 hotels in Brazil, Japan, South Africa and ...
...didn't matter.

Formule 1 have dispensed with keys altogether from what I could tell, and we used a new access code to get into our room, which the man at reception had given us. It was all very strange and futuristic. I was slightly nervous about not having a key, as I wasn't convinced that the door was locked, but with some testing (I made my husband go into the corridor then shut the door on him...) decided it worked well enough.
more

I was looking for a cheap hotel in the area of Abbeville after my husband discovered it was about £50 cheaper (at least) for us to get the ferry to France on a Friday night than early on a Saturday morning, presumably because of all the day-trippers. I'd heard of Formule 1 before, and seen many of their hotels around on previous journeys through France, so decided to check them out.

Background

Formule 1 hotels can be seen across France, and are also available in other European countries, including the UK, Germany and Spain among others. For those of you travelling slightly further afield, there are Formule 1 hotels in Brazil, Japan, South Africa and Australia too. They're easily identifiable by the bright yellow colour scheme they all seem to use, both on the website and on the buildings themselves.

They use a consistent format for their hotels, and are firmly targeted at backpackers and the like - people looking for a bed and not much else, as cheaply as possible - room prices are currently 32€ or 29€ depending on the season, or approximately £20 a night.

The website

I found information about the hotel, and subsequently booked a room, via their website (www.hotelformule1.com). The website is fairly good, and available in English, French or German, although I did notice a few mis-translations when looking at the English site. Despite that, there was nothing too difficult to understand, and the nagivation worked well.

The only point where I didn't get a translated page was when I confirmed our booking - the instructions on how to find the hotel were given in French. For us that wasn't a problem since our French is pretty good, but if yours isn't, watch out.

Finding the hotel

In Abbeville, the hotel is just off junction 22 of the A16 motorway (follow Abbeville Centre from the roundabout, it's about 500m on the left), so should be fairly easy to find. If, that is, you get off the motorway at the right junction...unfortunately we didn't as we were coming from the A28 and ended up driving through the centre of Abbeville and found the hotel more by luck than anything else.

The map that you can print off from the website is wholly inadequate, and I'd highly recommend making sure that you have both the street address of the hotel and a decent map with you when you travel! When we found the hotel it turned out to be next to Géant's hypermarket, and there are plenty of signs for that along the way, so if in doubt head for Géant Abbeville.

Booking a room

Booking a room on the website is a simple job, although the process varies slightly depending on the route you take to get to the booking form. If you use the general link at the top of the homepage, then you'll need to identify the hotel you want to stay in first, then move onto dates and availability. If you search for the hotel you want to stay in first, then you can just use the "dates and reservations" link to the right of the search results.

There, you select how many rooms you want (all rooms are the same, and sleep up to three people) and how many breakfasts, then enter your contact details and you're about done. During this process you register with the site, so future bookings should be quicker (although I haven't made a second booking, so I can't confirm that yet). Payment is secure, and although I entered all my card details during this stage, no payment was taken from the account until after our stay.

Getting into our room

We arrived at the hotel late at night, and were fully expecting to find nobody on site. We had no problems finding a space in the car park - there seemed to be plenty of space for the number of rooms on offer - and duly headed towards the front door. We had been given an access code to get in the front door, and another code to access our room with once we were inside. However, we couldn't get the access code to work, and when I peered through the window I could see a night receptionist (at least I assume that's who he was) sitting behind the desk dozing. We rapped on the window, and he opened the door for us and checked us in.

I don't know whether that's standard practice at this hotel, but it certainly wasn't what we'd been led to expect on the website, so don't let it faze you if the same happens! It's also worth pointing out that the couple who followed us to the door were turned away by the receptionist as all the rooms were full - it seems it's a popular place.

So with our access code we wandered off to find our room, which was on the ground floor. We already knew that the facilities would be somewhat spartan, but since all we really wanted was somewhere to sleep that didn't matter.

Formule 1 have dispensed with keys altogether from what I could tell, and we used a new access code to get into our room, which the man at reception had given us. It was all very strange and futuristic. I was slightly nervous about not having a key, as I wasn't convinced that the door was locked, but with some testing (I made my husband go into the corridor then shut the door on him...) decided it worked well enough.

The room itself contained a standard sized double bed, then above the head end (assuming you sleep with your head to the wall, anyway) was a single bunk bed. Along the far wall was a sink with mirror, bathroom light and shaving socket above it, the window, and a small corner table with a portable TV on a bracket above that. The window had a black out shutter on it, and a safety catch which meant we could sleep with it partially open even though we were on the ground floor - although with the window open we couldn't leave anything on the small table as it could be swiped.

Our room smelt slightly of smoke, which meant that leaving the window open was essential, I don't know whether all rooms are effectively smoking rooms, but it is France so it wouldn't surprise me!

The Facilities

There were very few facilties at the hotel, just the bare minimum. Apart from the sink in each room, there was a toilet (English style, rather than hole in the ground), and a shower next to that, out in the corridor near our room. I'd say it was only about 6 or 7 metres from our room to either of them. Loo roll was provided in the toilet, but remember to take your own towels with you if you want a shower or a wash as well as your wash kit.

There's no tea or coffee making facilities in the room, but there are a few vending machines near reception that provide snacks and drinks, they seemed fully stocked when we passed. We had some bits with us from the journey, so didn't bother with those - just as well, as a quick glance at the prices showed they were rather expensive.

One thing I noticed fairly quickly when trying to get to sleep was how thin the walls are in this place. I heard a distant baby crying a couple of times, and also the man in the room next to ours snored quite badly. Neither of these things actually woke me up once I was asleep, so it wasn't too bad but I'm not a very light sleeper either.

The breakfast

We splashed out with our booking, and spent an extra €3 each on breakfast before we left the hotel. I was actually quite impressed with it, it was easily better than the "free" breakfast you get in American motels and similar. We had a choice of coffee, juice, milk, two or three types of cereal, croissants and pain au chocolat, slices of baguette or brioche with butter and jam, fruit compote and yogurts, and could take as much as we wanted. Other than the slices of baguette suffering because they were cut and open to the air, it was remarkably good. Everything was replenished regularly.

There were a couple of seating areas for breakfast. The main one was next to where the food was laid out, just opposite reception. However just outside the front door was some plastic garden furniture, and we sat there along with a few other couples and families. We were under a canopy, so even though the sun was rather fierce even so early in the day, we were very comfortable.

Conclusion

Formule 1 at Abbeville is great, so long as it's what you're after. I wouldn't recomment it for things like quality of services, facilities, and so on, as it's really not that kind of place. It wouldn't suit families with small children as the only bed availabe for them is the bunk. Booking two rooms doesn't guarantee that they're next to each other, so it might not be suitable for slightly older families if parents are in a different room. However if what you're looking for is somewhere to crash for a night or two that's cheap, clean, and no frills, then you're certainly looking at the right place. As such, I'd recommend it.

I'm going to award it three stars, one goes because of the smell in our room, and the other for the difficulties we had actually getting inside the place on arrival.

Other information

Visit the website: www.hotelformule1.com
You can't get dinner at the hotel, but there's a partnership deal set up with Ibis or Courtpaille to eat at a special rate if you're staying at Formule 1. There's an Ibis hotel right next to (in fact in front of) the hotel, so it's not far at all if you do want some dinner. Although in my opinion you'd be better going 100 yards down the road to Géant and eating in their restaurant instead. 

...less