First and foremost, Appart'City Residence Lille Grand Palais is an apartment complex for rent (short and long term). That means everything you know about staying in a hotel does NOT apply here. When you stay at a place like Appart'City Residence Lille Grand Palais, you’re getting a room, or rooms, with no amenities.

Places like Appart'City Residence Lille Grand Palais are good for single travelling, low budget, not expecting to eat at a restaurant type of traveler that knows French.
Residencies like this are ala’carte. They are a low cost stay however if you want any type of amenity like phone or internet service, you will pay a fee not just for use but of connection fees. You also will have to clean your own place as well as clean your own sheets, towels, dishes, etc. If you would want services like cleaning or laundry, they are available at a fee.

So if you roll all your fees to have a hotel experience, you should just stay at one.

The location is debatable since it is on the outskirts of the main centre. It is at least a 10 minute walk to the Metro. The neighborhood is somewhat questionable because it is residential and your walk to and from the Metro takes you through some dark areas’ including a construction site. So those late evenings returning from a Café should be done via a taxi, (again, know your French).

There are no food shops or restaurants close by until you go by the Metro station. This part of town will be shutdown before 10pm and many restaurants in France usually don’t start server dinner until 7pm.

Although the residence backs a highway, they place the entire side of the building behind a large glass wall. When you open a window you can touch the glass wall because it will be less than 18 inches away from you. As odd as it sounds it was extremely effective in keeping the highway noise to a minimum.

The office, (not a front desk), is available only during business hours so you will not have onsite assistance during overnight and or on weekends. They leave you with an emergency number to call should you need assistance.

We only stayed here, (two adults and two children), because the French were having one of their labor protect marches in Lille and many of hotels in the city were unavailable.

Lille is a must return since it is a “mini-Paris” only a 90 train ride from London, however our intentions will be planned well more in advance.

Well, because of our purpose of coming here, we didn't have choice of where to stay. Needless to say, if we did, we wouldn't be choosing this place for sure.
For starters, the location. It is somewhat of a remote/developing area of the city and the nearest metro station is some 10min walk away. Outside our window, there is a major section of highway which you can observe traffic everyday along with the noise.
This apartment/hotel has this european/modern/sleek look outside. However, I don't believe they thought about the practicality of it at all. On one side of the bldg, the rooms
come with a balcony which you can only use during the day because there are NO dividers between the rooms! The other side has no balcony and there is a noise blocking, clear plexiglass wall covering entire side of the bldg...which means even if you try to open the window to get some air, you are out of luck!
The rooms are typical european size. (We have a hard time understanding why they don't bother selecting a real bed over a sofabed...)
It looked clean but when we went into the room, we noticed one of the light bulbs was out, the table had a really dusty leg, the toilet seat was missing one of the screws, the bathroom fan was filled with black dust, the shower drain was clogged and the door for the shower stall didn't seal so we had to mop every time when we took a shower...etc,. Overall cleanliness does not meet with our (western)standard.
Among the staff at this hotel, some were very helpful and others were not willing to help at all. On one occasion, I went down to the front desk and nobody was there. I saw three staff members in the room next door and two saw me standing there, but they just kept on doing whatever they were doing. I had to ask someone else who just walked by. She yelled at one of them and then, they asked me what I was looking for. The next time when I went down, one of the girls told me that someone would come to my room after 1hr. I waited, waited, waited,........
5 hours later, I finally went down and she just handed me the very thing I was waiting for! All she had to do was lift her tiny finger to give me a courtesy phone call to come down instead of leaving me hanging.
Since this is halfway point of my stay, I won't be able to conclude just yet.
If I run into any more situation that I should report back, I shall do so.

I booked this hotel online as I believed their claim to be a few minutes from the 2 trainstations and as I would arrive at one and depart from the other this seemed very convenient. I walked and walked and walked to the hotel from Flandres station and eventually found it behind some apartments (a louer) and construction. My relief at finding it was soon replaced with frustration as I had asked a friend to book for me through a third party site (hotels.com) and received the details by text message. I did not scroll to the final line of the text which informs of the need to call at least 24 hours in advance of arrival to get an access code. I did not have this code and tried calling the phone number which they advertise on the door of the premises but was on hold for ages and was calling with a UK mobile to a French number and did not want to pay extortionate roaming charges. Eventually I gave up and went elsewhere, leaving another frustrated guest trying to get in. I went to the other hotel on the same street which was nice, clean and basic and took the metro back to the centre of Lille to meet colleagues for dinner.

I would not recommend this place unless you can arrive during the very limited opening times and will not need any advice or assistance from a receptionist. I clicked one star for everything above as I could not figure out how to click on not applicable or no stars!

I had agreed with the hotel manager of a procedure for getting my key when arriving after the reception closes (7 pm). There was a key waiting for me, but of a kind physically impossible to fit into the relevant lock. I had to spend almost 2 hours waiting, calling (with roaming) a number from which help was supposed to be got if one cannot access one's room outside the opening hours of the reception. I called the number 4 times while waiting, speaking with two different people and being hung up once. I was told not to worry and to wait. It all depended on these people getting hold of the manager. In 2 hours they apparently succeeded. When I pointed out that my problem is not that I'm worried but that I have other things to do than to wait, I was told that I could do those other things! (Well, I couldn't: starting to work, resting, or cooking the food I had just bought just aren't things one can do waiting in an empty hotel lobby.)

In two hours the manager called and had found a solution to the problem.

Anyone wishing to enter this apart'hotel after 7 pm, beware of a difficult procedure of whose success there is no guarantee.

I had stayed once earlier in this apart'hotel, in a room of type T1bis. That time the surprise was the sink below the shower which didn't function, but allowed the water to enter the living room as well.

Otherwise the apart'hotel is quite good, at least the goal has clearly been to create a serious chain of apart'hotels of good quality and OK price. I suppose in France one could easily encounter also less serious attempts to similar effect.