All hotels need renovating every so often, so the choice to the owners is either to do it all in one go and close for the period, or do it floor by floor and keep open for custom. If this is the case, I think the first rule should be to advise customers at the time of booking (across all booking engines) that renovations are in progress. Then, we wouldn't have been slightly overpowered by the smell of paint as we walked through the fifth floor to our room. And why do hotel designers feel that the bathroom and the bedroom must be open plan? Out of some misplaced belief that people in bed have to talk to their partner who's cleaning their teeth? I'm all for big bathrooms, but not if it results in a much smaller bedroom, which is does in this case. And why put in a cupboard under the luggage rack which could contain a minibar, but doesn't? Or build a shelf for tea and coffee facilities, but not put them in? Or make a decision to close the restaurant and bar at the weekends? The staff were variable: the woman at breakfast insisted on all ten of us sitting right next door to each other, as if, in an earlier life, she'd worked for Clermont Ferrand Institute for Young Offenders and wanted to keep an eye on us all. Here's a tip: breakfast isn't worth the €17 they charge: go to the bar over the road and get a proper French breakfast. Unless you like sausages and bacon sitting in oil accompanied by some rather crusty scrambled egg. The night porter, however was hilarious and really eager to please. We only paid €89 for the room. And, for that price, it was fine and exactly what we needed for a stopover. But it was early January and I'm sure in the middle of the year, you'd pay double that, so beware.
One other word of warning: we arrived in Clermont on a Saturday night and by the time we'd checked in and had gone out looking for restaurants, it was approaching ten o'clock. We were told to go to the Place de Jaude, which was five minutes' walk from the hotel. All the restaurants we went into not only said no, but looked at us as if we were mad, truly mad. "Monsieur, it is ten o'clock on a Saturday night and you want food? Zut, alors." We ended up in Macdonalds. How sad is that?