Is anyone familiar with the Swiss based Minotel hotel chain?? While searching for hotels in Italy, I ran across some associated with Minotel. Can anyone tell me anything about the chain or its hotels??

www.minotel.com

Steve,<BR><BR>Minotel isn't a true hotel chain, it's a marketing association (like Best Western for example) - each property is individually owned & operated, so it would be difficult to generalize. <BR><BR>Minotels are mostly tourist-class properties (3*)<BR><BR>Hope this helps,<BR>Andre

I've only been exposed to some of their information for France and generally it seems to me that most of the hotels are not in center city. Their list of Paris hotels is really in the outer areas, as I recall. It's not a hotel chain in the usual sense, as Andre says, but I think it's some kind of funny deal where you have to prepay all your hotel costs and then get "vouchers" which you can spend only at their listed properties. I don't get it, myself, as the costs aren't any better than booking yourself from the ones I've seen and buying those vouchers doesn't guarantee you a room, you still have to reserve ahead. So, just because a hotel joins their association doesn't mean anything in particular that I could see. I have stayed in one that is on their list in Strasbourg that was perfectly nice and was centrally located, but Minotel doesn't own the hotels.

WQe stayed at the minotel Marconi in Venice. It's right at the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal.<BR>It was very nice.