Now that I have booked our first holiday week this summer in Ile de Ré, I am spending lots of time looking for our second week holiday place. After musing over Portugal and Mallorca and realising that it would be either a long trip or an expensive one to go there from La Rochelle, it seems just easier to stay in France.

So in my quest to find a place where we haven’t been yet, I came across two new hotels that will open this summer. One is in Ardèche and the other one in Provence. Both have interesting concepts on paper.

Le Domaine de Manville

• Bedrooms: 30 rooms and 5 villas
• Site web

Located in les Alpilles, in Provence, this 5 stars estate is the former Golf des Beaux de Provence. They promise a  spa, a gastronomic restaurant and a kids’club and will open in June 2014.  I emailed them to get more recent pictures to help us decide if that’s the place for us. We should hopefully get them end of April and make a decision then.

Le Domaine de Chalvêche

• Bedrooms: 10
• Site web

This will one is located in Les Ardèches, also in the South East of France but closer to Le parc des cévennes or Montpellier.  It will probably be a bit more isolated and has only 10 bedrooms, which appeals to me.  However, their lack of photos on Facebook doesn’t bode very well in terms of readiness for the opening date in July 2014.  The one above is a kind of mock-up of the finished state. Mind you, it could be because they want to reveal the good stuff only once it’s really ready. We’ll see.

Should you book a hotel on its first season?

The good thing when you book a  hotel in their first season is that you can get some discount on the rates. The not so good thing is that you can also encounter bad service, noisy work in progress, chaotic service etc…  I don’t know if you have stories to tell in that regard but I do and this will be the topic of a post soon !

I do find it quite funny though and I like to be the new one finding a new place so we may give a go at one of those; I will of course report back to you!