Mercure Hotel Duesseldorf City Nord — Hotel in Dusseldorf

I will start off by stating the obvious:

The negatives:

The location of the hotel is on the edge of Düsseldorf and the nearest train station is almost 10 minutes away by foot. 10 minutes sound not very far away but it actually is, especially when you are carrying a lot of luggage with you. However this is not the worst part. The worst part of the location is you need at least 20 minutes to the main station and/or 20 minutes to the center. Not to mention that the trains and buses coming every 15 minutes. So if you are unlucky, you need 35 minutes to reach your destination. If you choose the option of travelling by taxi, be prepared to spend 22 Euros/ drive which is not a lot if you want to do this once or twice. However it is money wasted to be doing that 4 times a day.

Room Inadequacies for a 4 Star hotel:

The hotel is being advertised as a 4 star hotel and frankly I have no Idea how it passed the certification. Let me explain and you be the judge of why in god's name this is a 4 star hotel, that we spent our hard earned money to book.(In this section I will not discuss the positives, it will be done in the later part of this review).

So first of all the most annoying (lacking) feature: a safe to store our valuables. I have been all around the world and most importantly all around germany and europe. I found safes in the smallest and simplest hotels (3 star and 4 star hotels). Instead I have to give my valuables at the reception! I am sorry but this was such an inconvenience, going to the lobby and giving up my valuables in front of everyone.

The second lacking feature is a fridge or a mini bar inside the rooms. The reason behind it is that the hotel is eco-friendly and want to save energy as much as possible. This is all fine and dandy, however for a mechanical engineer this is a Bllsht excuse to not have mini bars inside. They were wasteful enough installing an air conditioning unit in GERMANY which in an area like Düsseldorf on the 4th floor makes no sense. Plus there are plenty of ways to reduce the energy used by fridges in the rooms, the simplest being: only activate the fridge a few hours before check in, when the room is booked. For a hotel like that, the comfort of the client must come before anything else and any excuse should not be tolerated (especially when you pay for a 4 star hotel and get a 1 star hotel experience).

Oh and they have a vending machine with overpriced items in the first floor only. I have to wake up in the middle of the night go down 3 floors and get an overpriced beverage.....

No Gym or pool to compensate

The world's worst WiFi service:

I was running late on some work and thought in my free time I would catch up on some things, maybe check some emails and reply to urgent issues. I connected to the free wifi there and was prompted to put in my information for free access. Feeling this was unnecessary (and it is! ) I accepted the terms and filled in the info. I thought to myself: lets get connected and just forget about this wrong decision (which is staying in this hotel). I work for 10 minutes then I get prompted again to do the same steps as described above and if I turn off the wifi and reconnect, I have to do the same again. Since I didn't have much time for the incompetence of the wifi and the staff's excuses, I called up my mobile service and upgraded my mobile internet so I can work in peace .

Food offered at the hotel vs around the area:

The food may or may not have been wonderful, I can not say for sure. What I can say is at that point I was doing all what I can to NOT benefit the hotel. Therefore I refused to order any of their food. Especially that the food was super overpriced and it was the only place in the area where you can get some real food other than Döner. They had a monopoly in the area and were taking advantage of their guests.

The positives:

-Very friendly staff (at least the ones at the reception). I think the staff should actually get to manage the hotel, because they were the only people doing their jobs as hosts +...

Overall a fair priced place, considering what many places in Düsseldorf ask for. Location is easy to reach by car and a tram station to get in and out of town in about 20-30 minutes is also close by. The staff is friendly and helpful, the underground parking is reasonably priced and big enough to find a spot even when the Hotel seems fully booked.

Sadly the (basic) technology feels dated and in need of renewal: the AC was nothing more than a very noisy fan, there was no cooling effect even on maximum level. We were lucky that the weather just cooled down and a tilted window helped us. Technicians to fix that are only on site in the morning (according to the front desk). Luckily our room was facing away from the highway ramp, so the traffic was not too loud. But we could hear the conversations from the people outside quite well. the water pressure in the shower of the 5th floor was a bit low and the heater was a bit "jumpy". Every minute or two the water got way warmer and then colder again for a few seconds. the kettle in the room did not work at all basically every time we came back to our room at least one key card was no longer working, often both. During a two night stay we had to get new / re-coded cards three times, and one of the final pair also stopped working the night before check out. We stored our cards in a NFC shielded purse, far away from our phones (the front desk mentioned at the first time that having them close to the phone may cause this issue) they provide a capsule coffee machine but we could not find any pods anywhere in the room

For us this wasn't a too big issue, but if you rely on any of that you maybe should be prepared and have a plan B. (Yes, we reported all of this when it happened / we recognized it and again...

I have stayed in many hotels some fancier than others but this is by far the worst hotel all considered . Let’s start by the staff , we specifically asked for one bed we got two when highlighted we were informed that ( in Germany we don’t have one big mattress we can only push two singles together ) which is of course not true The heater did not work and we are talking about January in Germany when highlighted we were told that ....again ( in Germany the heaters needs time to work , of course that was not true either just a faulty heater ) Did I mention the internet ?! . They technically have free WiFi but it does NOT work you need to pay to get the one that does work Our final night ( we stayed for 4 days all pre paid unfortunately ) the sink stopped working and dirty water started floating when we called the hotel this was their answer ( we can bring the plunger but we don’t have anyone who can help with this . They may be able to fix it tomorrow , (expecting us to just roll with it )

They offered us a new room after we stood our ground and Taraaaa They did have a double bed room after all

They do not provide iron in the room although they have an ironing station in the 5th floor ( three irons in total ) And they do not have safes in the rooms And as far as we are told they don’t have bath tubs either ( we only have showers in Germany 🤦🏻‍♀️ As they put it . )

To summarise ..... STAY AWAY you can get cheaper with better service . It’s not close to much ( food wise ) You need a car to go any where and if you have a car they will charge...