On first arriving on a sunny evening, the hotel looked lovely. But it was all downhill after that.
When I went to check in, I was told that my room wasn’t actually in the hotel. I was given a key and the receptionist pointed to the vague distance. I had to drag my large suitcase out through the hotel car park, completely off the hotel premises, across a road, and through a sort of depressing motel complex to different premises on another site, completely unstaffed. I then discovered that my room was up two flights of narrow stone stairs, no lift. There was no way I could get my case up them. I couldn’t face dragging my case back to the hotel, so left it and went back to the hotel to ask for a different room. I was given a key to a downstairs room. I returned, and discovered I couldn’t open the door. So – back to the main hotel again. The receptionist had to come with me, and drove me – with huge difficulty, she opened the door. I went in, took my cases in, and left, in order to get some dinner. Before going, I checked to see if I could open the door again. And couldn’t. Back to the receptionist, who told me that no-one else had difficulty getting into rooms. Not true – I talked to other guests, who had to get the maintenance staff to open their rooms up as they couldn’t. I was given a couple of other keys to other rooms, no more luck with those. I eventually got into one of the rooms, and realised that the problem with the lock was that the door frame was so broken that the door no longer sat straight in it, so the lock jammed. When you pushed the door, the whole door frame moved inwards. The room was large, but pretty awful. For example, the lampshades were broken and filthy and there were squashed mosquitos on the wall. I didn’t feel safe. Walking back – again – to the actual hotel for dinner, I discovered that the large car park was completely unlit – it had lights, they just weren’t on. I asked the receptionist to turn the lights on – she put the outside lights for the building on, but didn’t bother with the car park. So when I returned to the horrible motel place, it was a walk in completely darkness. As a single female traveller, I felt extremely vulnerable.
The hotel will not call normal taxis for you. They have one shuttle car and if you book early with them, you might be lucky enough to get a place. The first thing I saw in reception was a sign on the desk warning you that you might not get transfer transport. What sort of hotel won’t call taxis for guests?
The breakfast room had a sea view and could have been lovely. As it was, none of the tables had been cleared – apparently for hours, as they were all completely covered in dirty crockery. The choice was very poor – when I arrived, there were just a few badly burnt croissants sitting in a huge pile of black crumbs.
I have always believed Mercure to be a reliable chain, and this is probably why my travel agent chose it. Mercure should be deeply ashamed of themselves. I suppose that most people book this place for just one night before boarding a cruise, so it never needs to worry about return custom. It is horrible. To be avoided.