Sara

I'm in the early days of working with a tour company to arrange a concert tour with the chorus I sing with to France in 2020. We want to spend a couple of days in The Loire Valley (and hopefully do a concert there), and Amboise seems like a good place to base ourselves because of its location, and the charm and walkability of the town. Because of the size of our group, the tour company is suggesting a hotel about a mile and a half from the center of town and the chateau. As we have some older members, and our free time may be limited, I wondered about transportation options for those who want to go into town to shop, sightsee, or eat, but don't want to do the 20 - 25 minute walk each way. If Lyfts and/or Ubers are available, that could give people some options. Thanks for any information about this.

whitehall

Sorry I don't have an answer. But the quickest way to get an up-to-date answer to the question might be to send off an email to the proposed hotel.

Dukey1

What does the size of your group have to do with it or is it because this hotel outside of town is the only one which can take all of you? What would happen if you told the "tour company" you wanted to stay IN town so you wouldn't have to ask about Uber or Lyft. And why are you asking about those and not regular taxis? Because you think they are cheaper?

greg

You can use your App to see if Uber or Lyft is available.
Uber does this more elegantly. Turn off the location service, so Uber does not insist on starting from where you are currently located. Use the Pin to force pickup point. It will tell you service is not currently available.
Lyft shows this in a round about way. Again turn off the location service. Force pickup and destination points by pin. Lyft would spin the wheel for quite a white and shows no solution. It asks if you want a Lyft to serve in that area.
How many rooms are you looking at? Is your tour company recommending something like a Novotel or an Ibis who are used to group bookings? One hotel with quite many rooms right in town is Bellevue. There are few others of various sizes not quite in the center but not as far away as the Novotel. Your tour company would probably not be motivated to look into smallish hotels when they don't pay commissions or allowed to block rooms with terms acceptable to them.

Christina

I think small hotels just won't/can't book large groups due to their size.

AFAIK Lyft doesn't exist outside the US in any country.

I don't know about Uber in AMboise, I think it only exists in larger cities in France, but am not positive. Local taxis do exist, of course.

StCirq

There are at least 7 taxi companies available in Amboise. A simple google search will identify them.

Staying 20-25 minutes outside town (where, exactly?) doesn't sound the slightest bit ideal to me unless the hotel has charm and nice surroundings.

travelhorizons

I would put this back on the tour company. Tell them it's unacceptable to have the group so far out of town, that it would be acceptable to split the group between two or more hotels in the center of things.

apersuader65

Lyft is only available in North America. Uber indicates that the Tours area (inlcuding Amboise) is served.

kerouac

Since it is a group, it would seem normal to me for the tour company to arrange for a shuttle into town for those interested since they think that 3km is a reasonable distance. Then again, if you have told them (as you told us) that it is a concert tour and that you hope to perform in the area, they don't really have much of a reason to think that anybody is there for tourism or that such people should be catered to. If you told them "I have a group that wants to see the city and the chateau," they might come up with a different suggestion.

Sara

Thanks, everyone. It's helpful to know that Lyft isn't available outside the U.S. The reason we may need to stay a distance outside of town is the size of our group. We haven't actually chosen a tour company yet, but we've interviewed and asked for preliminary quotes from 4 companies (and we have let each one know we are considering other companies). They have each suggested the same hotel when in Amboise (The Novotel), but I've asked them to look at some other hotels closer to (or in) town. If there are any others that could accommodate us, we'd need to see if that would raise the price of the tour for each traveler significantly (we're trying to keep this affordable for as many as we can).

The tour company we choose will provide transportation for all group activities. I'm thinking more in terms of when the group will have free time, and some small groups or individuals will probably want to go off on their own to explore, sightsee, or shop. I figured there are probably taxis, just wondered about other options to make it easier for the travelers if we end up staying at this hotel.

greg

Novotel Amboise has 121 rooms. Other hotels are unlikely to match this size. This kind of hotel is more willing to block a group of rooms when it is a fraction of its inventory. This is not the case for small hotels.

StCirq

Well, maybe you need to add up the cost of the Novotel plus the cost of getting into and out of Amboise in taxis and compare it to actually staying in town. I'm not convinced you're getting much of a deal with this staying way out-of-town concept.

Frankly, the whole concept sounds sketchy to me. How did you, why did you, even choose Amboise to go sing in? It's a very unlikely place for a concert. The "charm and the walkability of the town," particularly if you're staying at a Novotel 25 minutes away, is crazy. Frankly, the whole plan sounds nuts.

kerouac

How about Blois instead of Amboise? The Ibis hotel (56 rooms) is only 50 meters from the ch teau in the absolute center of town and the Ibis Styles (52 rooms) next to the train station is only slightly farther. I have stayed at the Ibis in Blois and it is a splendid old hotel on the historical registry, but refitted with all of the modern necessities. On the other hand, breakfast is included at the Ibis Styles, but since you are a group you would probably have a deal at either of the hotels for things like that. (And there is also a Novotel if you require that category.)

Christina

I was with a group in Dublin once and we stayed in a hotel outside the city center. This really wasn't a big problem as it was on a main road with good bus connection to the city center, it didn't ruin my trip at all. In fact, it turned out to e an excellent choice as it was during a hurricane (CHarlie?) and the hotel was on slightly higher ground so a lot of people from nearby homes were camped out in our labby when they got flooded out. At least I was lucky and my hotel room was on the side of the hotel where the wind/rain wasn't directed from as I heard those folks got their rooms flooded. Just interesting memories form past travel experiences, but I've had to do that kind of thing several times when with gruops, and the hotel chosen ALWAYS had some kind of ready transportation, if not a metro stop. Meaning good bus lines to city center. I think this is what good group travel planners do. Also, my situations were always large cities, and those are the ones that tend to have good bus lines, not small burgs like Amboise. Yes, there are buses in that area, but not from rural areas like that hotel.

In fact, there is one local bus line that goes near that hotel, line 3. Problem is it only runs Wed and Friday and only has one stop per day each way. Not very useful for you.

I suggest you take Kerouac's advice on Blois.

kerouac

Amboise and Blois are only about 35km apart, so if anybody has their heart set on visiting the chateau in Amboise, it would not be a big problem.

Sara

Thanks, everyone - I thought I'd had my question answered, so didn't check back for a couple of days, and now I see that there are more messages. I appreciate all of the feedback.

We aren't necessarily planning to do a concert in Amboise, but rather somewhere in the area in a chateau or church. The person who is working on this tour with me is very knowledgeable about France and has spent a lot of time there, and she suggested Amboise as a base for our time in the Loire Valley, as it's a charming town that is centrally located. Thanks for the suggestion about Blois, I'll ask her if she'd considered it - it might be a better option for us.