Mercure Albury — Hotel in Albury

This hotel is well below par for a Mercure and we would suggest you stay elsewhere.

Rooms need an overhaul, staff need to clean the rooms properly and the manager has very poor customer relationship skills. Accor should review the branding of this as a Mercure as most $100 a night motor-inns set a higher standard.

We booked 2 rooms for our business stay and after checking in at 8pm on the first night and paying for the 4 nights we were told the lift was out of action - only useable for bags - and we had to use the fire stairs (accessed from the garden outside the front) to go up and down to our 3rd floor rooms (7 fights of stairs).

We asked staff about it a day later we were advised it was out of action for a week before we arrived and it was sill not working when we left 4 days later. There was no communication from the hotel about the outage until after we paid for the room and not even mentioned the week before we checked in when we booked the second room on the phone.

We asked about compensation/discount for the inconvenience and the request was referred to the manager who on the last day declined all requests for compensation, saying we could have cancelled our booking without charge before checking-in and stayed elsewhere. Ridiculous statement given we were only advised of the issue after we checked-in and paid for the full stay.

The outside of the hotel looks modern but that is where it ends.

One room was a Deluxe Spa Suite - to say the least it was not clean and very tired with broken curtains, damaged table, el-cheapo robes and bedside tables, uncomfortable lounge and a bathroom badly needing to be renovated.

We wiped out drawers as is our habit before using them and they were filthy with black dust/grime. The venetians between the lounge and bathroom were also filthy - looked like they hadn't been cleaned for years.

Staff only fully make the bed every 3rd morning so they just pull-up the sheets the other days leaving the bottom sheet crumpled-up.

The bathroom needed a total renovation. The toilet is around 50mm off the side wall so you can't even sit on it square. The shower is over a really old spa bath that is built in about 40mm above the tiled surround, so water from the shower pools on the tiles around the top of the spa and you have to mop the water up with a face washer after every shower as it can't drain away. The wash basin was cracked and the hot tap missing its H cap.

The towels are old and need to be replaced - wafer-thin and some with holes worn in them, and this is the first hotel we have ever stayed that doesn't provide any tissues in the room.

We ate at the restaurant once a few years ago (when not staying at the hotel) and it was good, but this time our one and only dinner there was only average, so we ate elsewhere the other nights.

Our recommendation is to stay at the Mantra - we stayed there before and it is much better, and should have this time but have the Mercure a try as we are...

Worst hotel experience ever. Terrible customer service. Extremely humiliating and unpleasant restaurant service. It took over an hour for our orders to be taken and over 1.5 hour for meals to be served after the order. 2 of 11 meals arrived first and rest arrive over an hour later. When we reminded the manager about our group wanting to put the order in, he said yes he was coming but continued to clean other tables and serve customers that arrived later than us, and invite new customers in. He explained to me at the end of the meal that it was because I had a big group and he wanted to serve the small groups first, which negated our effort to have booked to come in early as we had young children and elderly in our group. He was extremely unapologetic about the situation and tried to intimidate me in applying the Accor discount incorrectly, and gave me half the bill first and the other half 20 minutes later while he went away to service other customers, which made me feel extremely disrespected the whole time. I told him I had never had the discount applied the way he did as it gave me smaller discount, but he insisted that it had to be done that way. I tried to explain the situation to the manager that evening, he said he would look at it and for me to return in the morning. When I returned, he said he didn’t understand what I was saying, I explained again and letting him know how other hotels had applied the discounts before, he asked where does it say it needs to be done that way and then said he’d never heard of it before. I then let him know the bedding in the room did not match my booking and they had over charged me, he said he would look at it and contact me, I am yet to hear from him after 5 days. Lift was broken when we arrived, no sign was up to inform customers on upper levels, many customers were waiting to use the lift not knowing it was broken. My 88 and 78 year old parents who were stuck on 4th floor could not come to ground for dinner, so we ordered room service. They sent the meals up without cutlery and we called 4 time for cutlery to be sent up, but no one did, so I had to send my own children to deliver the cutlery for my parents. Again, when I gave this feedback to the manager, he was unapologetic, only to say we were short staffed. We had tried to be as empathetic towards their situation as possible knowing it is tough for the service industry at the moment, but it makes it difficult when the manager’s attitude towards my feedback is unapologetic and presents himself as if they should rightfully have conducted themselves the way they did.

All in all this was the most unpleasant and humiliating...

It started the moment I walked into the foyer of the hotel :- ||* Lady at check-in was rude and her customer service skills were lacking. Asked me to pay for the room - disputed this as I had already made payment through Allcor website and showed evidence, was able to go to room after the kerfuffle, that's when I go up to my room only to be confronted by a queen room, she gave me wrong room booked deluxe with spa NOT queen room with bath/shower. Ended up getting the correct room after this inconvenience. I never got the wine and cheese, chocolate platter either not happy with. ||* I spent a good hour on the phone to ALL.com Allcor - telling me they haven't had payment asked for receipt from bank - even though its on the app and website showing i paid in full. ||* Breakfast / Dinner and Room Service menus online - Menus were not updated couldn't get pancakes for breakfast even though it stated this on the website under room service menu. Even had to show the check in lady and she just flogged me off!! ||* I ordered dinner at 5:30pm - It was late, when rung reception they said they start at 5:30pm. I never was told this when I ordered earlier - would be nice if they told us then!!! The order came finally at 6pm. Same with breakfast, I ordered this for 8am only to have it delivered at 8:30am.... why book in a time when you don't adhere to this!!?? - And food was missing, I paid for hash browns where is my refund for this? |||* No compendium for info such as menus, on what to do in a fire, WiFi logins info, restaurant menu, room service menu etc. I couldn't find it anywhere. The minibar isn't a mini bar there was noting much - you call 1 small chocolate and 60g of chips minibar? ||* Cleanliness also has to be called into question too, the spa was disgusting mould around the edges of the tiles, no air vent to release the steam, wine and drinking glasses were fitly, you hear people going to the toilet, flushing and also draining the spas with water coming from the drains, and the wifi is atrocus cant use internet to surf, or do emails let alone to stream anything. non existence!!!||Safe to say that I will not be EVER going back to Mecure Hotel chain or Allcor again.... I am revoking my membership with them too - appalling treatment of a member!!!! Best advice is to avoid at...