On a recent European trip my wife and I, and a small group of friends, stayed in three Ibis hotels, namely; Laon, Stuttgart City and Firenze Prato Est. With good service and food from the Restaurant at Laon, and good bar snacks and service from the Ibis at Stuttgart City we not unreasonably expected a similar standard of catering and service from the Ibis at Firenze Prato Est. How disappointed we were to be. It was not possible to purchase ANY beer at the hotel as it had none at all. Pasta was off the menu. The waiter (and I use that term very loosely) supplied us with a pen and a form with tick boxes to place our order in the restaurant. After ticking virtually the only item that was still available on the “menu”, we ended up with two small paper thin pieces of tepid chicken and a heap of over cooked and over salted chips. The only thing Firenze Prato Est had in common with the previous two hotels was the red Ibis sign outside!

If you want to get to the centre of Florence with public transport easily, I won't recommend this hotel. However, if you have your own car it will be an excellent hotel for you. We followed the instructions of mickodwyer of 18 September 2007, but still ended up buying the wrong bus tickets. The first ticket seller you get to if you follow his instructions, is not a Lazzi bus! Make sure you buy a ticket for Lazzi, and don't expect the salespeople to be very helpfull. We had a terrible time getting information out of them. According to the Lazzi bus schedules there are regular busses from the hotel to the centre of Florence on a Sunday, but in reality, there are no busses at all! We stood at the bus stop for 3 hours and eventually a bus driver going in the opposite direction took pity on us and helped us out by taking us to Prato train station. The hotel is opposite I Gigli shopping centre which is handy, but that's all there is in the area and the centre is closed on Sundays. The rooms and bathrooms are absolutely fine, and the staff friendly, but the location is not ideal.

what you would expect from an ibis, standard conditions, some things not working properly, yopu have to insist \to get a good service not so easy to find by car, as they claim on the website (unless you have a GPS) + it takes about 1 hour to get into florence (firenze)

stayed here for 8 nights......very acceptable.... by train .....arriving in florence leave platform --turn sharp left,,,exit station using zebra...cross over to footpath on opposite side.....turn left ..there is your bus station... look for a lazzi bus to gigli... 1.40 euro ... buy some tickets jump on bus journey time 40 minutes .get out at gigli... coninue on straight and you spy on the right ---- ibis. in the commercial centre you have a choice of dining ...go to end of commercial mall upstairs. buses ply frequently to town and stay on the bus till the end and go to mccafe for a sit-down breakfast... ibis is clean quite and accessible and if you come by air to florence there is one as well adjacent to airport. its 69 for a double and in florence is great value...no taxi need in this set..---up. ignore previous reports!!!!!!!!!!!1 i liked it there....do you agree