I was a bit skeptical about this place because of the mediocre reviews on Tripadvisor, but it was just great for a family with 2 small children (ages 1.5 and 3.5).

La Divonne is clean, quiet, and in a great location. It's a short walk to the centre of Divonne-les-Bains, to a big grocery store, to the Lake of Divonne which has a sandy beach, and to a big park for kids.

The pool in the hotel is perfect for little kids, though i can see how it's pretty useless for adults. It goes in steps from 0.25 meters, to about 0.5 to about 0.75, to about 1 m at the deepest. I put my kids in water wings and they were super happy there.

Also there is a washer/dryer in the building and the apartment is stocked with clothes drying rack, vacuum, towels and shampoo, and everything we needed for the kitchen.

I don't know of any other place we could have stayed for a better price. Great value for money.

The only negatives perhaps are that there were a few stains on the carpets and that they only changed the towels once during our stay of 9 days.

A friend who lived in the locality of the Residhotel, booked it on our behalf. The Residhotel is less than a year old and our friend was keen to see inside the hotel buiding.

Unfortunately, the rooms were found to be basic beyond belief. We had a 2/3 person studio and the bed was only a pull out sofa bed that was in two parts, it was essentially two single beds that were heavy and inconvenient to set up and put away. The kitchen was lacking equipment, there was not even a kettle to boil water for a cup of tea.

Above the toilet was a huge hot water tank that regularly gave us both sore heads as we rose from the toilet, it was silly. We had one toilet roll in the room when we arrived, and when we asked the reception for another one we were told that we would have to buy one ourselves !

Don't expect to see any cleaners in the room. During our five days we had to make our own beds, clean the room, take the rubbish out to the carpark - we may well have stayed at the towns camping site. You do not expect to do these things when you stay in a hotel. We had the same towels, and the same bed linen for five days.

The reception staff need to attend a course in customer relations, they were positively hostile, unhelpful, and unsmiling. (With the exception of Tatiana who tried her best).

The photograph of the swimming pool on the website is deceptive, it is incredibly small and the depth goes from 0.5m to 1.5m - so unless you are under the age of ten years - don't bother with it.

La Divonne is a beautiful town with incredible views to both the Alps and the Jura foothills. Everybody should take the walk along the fast flowing stream that gushes through the town to the Sources La Divonne, this is where the stream breaks through the ground and the hillside. The townsfolk were catching trout directly from the stream.

The street market in La Divonne on Sunday was the best that we had ever seen. Its popularity was obviously very well known which drew in people from far and wide.