Bike-friendly accommodation directory

My colleagues at Moto Magazine have put together a handy little guide to bike-friendly accommodation, which is free to download from here

Yes, it is in French (but so are the hotels). The addresses and phone numbers are universal, though…

Simon W said:

My colleagues at Moto Magazine have put together a handy little guide to bike-friendly accommodation, which is free to download from here

Yes, it is in French (but so are the hotels). The addresses and phone numbers are universal, though…

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Thanks for that Simon very usefull.

for those of you wondering how to get it, Just fill in your email addy where it says Votre mail (obligatoire), and then click the valider button.

Merci!

Thank you, Simon.

For anyone looking at the hotels, you might notice that lots of them fly under the Logis banner. If nothing else, please don't anyone suppose or worry that other Logis hotels (and indeed non-Logis hotels not on the list) might be in any way anything but 'biker friendly'.

A more interesting list might be, 'Tell me a hotel that is not biker friendly' and, more importantly, why.

Is a hotel that doesn't have a car park or garage unfriendly to a motorcyclist? Is one where the owner and his wife do not speak fluent English necessarily hostile? As regards the latter, the opening post from Simon answers the question. Of course they are not unfriendly, it's simply that they speak another language.

I have copied the opening posts of Simon W's thread into the Accommodation section, too.

Richard

Thank you very much, that's really useful. Is there is any English option? I went for holiday last year to France, but even on the airport lady was talking to me in french language. From personal experience I know that french people belives that if you go to france you should speak french and I know there are not really like to use english language.

Nice joke.

In the same spirit, in Miami they only talk Spanish. But hey, I guess you knew that

Wapping said:

A more interesting list might be, 'Tell me a hotel that is not biker friendly' and, more importantly, why.

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I think to many UK Bikers a "Biker Friendly Hotel" means a Hotel run by some English Fella who has a bike himself, only serves English food and is predominantly full of English Bikers.

In ten years of visiting Europe at least once a year I must have stayed in over 30 different Hotels, every one seemed "Biker Friendly" to me regardless of where it was and the nationality of the people running the place, they have all seen bikers before and tend to understand we may want secure parking and offer it up if available and never have I felt unwelcome as a "biker".

Only language issue I ever had was at an Italian restaurant on the top of the Splugen Pass, they seemed most unhelpful and I could only assume it was because we knew no Italian, normally a bit of pointing and hand signalling is fine, but on this occasion we walked off to spend our money elsewhere.

Going a bit off topic here, but I think there is a phobia about staying somewhere that the hosts amy not speak English (or serve a Full English Breakfast / Show re-runs of Only Fools and Horses all day)

Knowing how to say Please, Thank you and Do you speak English in their own tongue is a start and in my experience appreciated, I also think that some foreigners who speak a bit of English don't appreciate that they only really need that single second language as it is so widely known around Europe, whereas I need a bit of French, German and Italian to navigate the Alps.

I have managed to get to being able to order some food and ask for a Hotel room in French (well a bit like the Policeman in Allo Allo) and I think this breaks the ice and they soon see sense and realise it will be painfully slow to achieve anything if they do not break out their English. A few have encouraged my nonsense and helped me learn a little bit more.

If you want to learn a few words for free check out Duolingo, I find it very hard to speak foreign, but being able to understand them helps a lot as they can quiz you and you only need to say Yes or No.