BY14 TLV Hotel — Hotel in Tel-Aviv

I spend NYE in Tel Aviv and I booked a Privilege Room at the Mercure Tel Aviv.

The taxi dropped me in front of the hotel and indicated it to me: it should be here. There are no logo, sign or anything indicating that the building in front of me is indeed the Mercure Hotel. I enter and see a messy lobby and building workers. I found the weird reception desk (unlike any other hotel I have seen, the reception is a desk, with the staff seated) and checkin begin. I notice that there are no Accor neither Mercure signage, branding or anything. Either this is a bad sign or I am at the wrong place.

Check In

I am at the right hotel. I am not greeted, nor welcomed, nor invited to seat down on one of the chair facing the desk. Instead my passport is asked and I am checked in to my Privilege room. No upgrade as the hotel is sold out (which was truly the case). I am given a drink voucher for a drink at the pantry (there are no bar).

The staff member is clearly annoyed I am here, so I just ask the very basic questions and go on my way. She confirmed the hotel is under renovation but this is nearly the end and soon finished. Great I am looking forward to see a renovated room.

Room

Wait, this is a renovated hotel ? Well I would not want to see before renovations then. The room is tiny (fair enough but it is really tinier than an Ibis in Hong Kong), the bathroom even more minuscule and outdated.

Heck there are holes in the wall.

There is is some Granola (part of the room, not a welcome gift - I had none by the way) and the mini bar contain one bottle of water, one tonic, a coke and an orange juice, as per the amenities of a Privilege room, This will be refilled once during my 5 nights stay.

Slippers and bathrobe are missing, but this is corrected quickly after I ask for them.

Photocopy of Dutch newspaper are provided every morning. Why Dutch ? Well in my current residence is in Germany. Thus Accor IT believes I hold a German passport, despite my profile being correctly set to French passport holder. So every time the prepopulated passport field is set to German when finalising a booking. Sometimes I might forget to correct, this was likely the case. Then German or Dutch, potato potayto. This will be corrected the third morning.

Upon inspection, the bathroom walls are dirty and there are nails protruding out.

Service

The staff always seem unhappy to be here. No staff member ever told me good morning during the breakfast for example, or even actually talked to me, or to the other guests as far as I could see.

The commons like the gym was dirty, and not cleaned (there was no refill of the paper towels put on the water fountain). The gym itself was cramped and the equipment badly maintained.

Location

Location is good, 5 minutes from the beach, 2 km from Jaffa, easy access to Allenby street.

Overall

An extremely disappointing property, which is not at the level to be a Mercure or a four star property. Honestly I had see worst one star places.

I received he usual feedback survey plus a SMS containing a link to another feedback survey, from an Israelian company. I was quickly contacted by the Guests Relations manager who asked for examples of my low ratings. I provided them and to this date I received no further communications.

The points for the stay are not awarded. The checkin in Places for this stay is...

We leave the hotel tomorrow. The hotel is great value for money and less than 5 minutes to the beach. |The staff are all extremely polite and helpful.|Our twin room is large and with the sea view we asked for.|Room a/c is good.|No minibar as stated on website, but there is a fridge to use, which we prefer anyway.|Lovely welcome note and box of chocolates waiting in the room on our arrival.|There’s a kettle, tea, coffee etc and all very clean, plus 2 bottles of water.|Powerful shower and great toiletries supplied; shower gel, shampoo and conditioner, so no need to bring your own.|Hairdryer and iron also supplied.|Shower is powerful.|We had 2 issues and both sorted very quickly by staff.|Gym on top floor which my daughter has been in every day.|The breakfast is amazing! Plenty of options, very fresh and excellent staff.||Only negatives;|There needs to be a ridge from shower screen to rest of bathroom as it’s impossible to contain the water just in the shower, so ends up all over the bathroom floor and often into the bedroom, no matter how careful you are.|Housekeeping is good as far as bed making and cleaning the floor, changing towels, etc. But despite a great tea/coffee tray, our dirty mugs have been here 3 days and the water bottles not replaced at all. There is a tea and coffee machine on reception level, but it would be nice to make it in the room beyond arrival day.||We think the hotel is great value and would 100% stay again. It’s only a 5 minute walk to the Carmel market and easy to get round the whole of Tel Aviv from here.||Tip Tel Aviv a mass of construction near the hotel with lots of roads inaccessible by car. Our taxi driver drove round twice before realising he had to drop us off on the corner. It’s only a 30 second walk, but taxi meters still run even when they can’t find or get to,...

Location is great, just a very short walk to the beach, and good restaurants

The room I felt was a good size, I found the bed itself quite uncomfortable and hard, and it was on wheels and would move if I sat upright. The bathroom very helpfully provided hair conditioner, but the shower is open and level with the floor so the whole bathroom gets very wet when you shower.

The hotel itself is great, I like the design, the staff were very friendly, they also offer online checkin to make the whole processes quicker, and they helpfully looked after our luggage at check out so we could do more sightseeing. The best thing was the nespresso machines, they offer free coffee and have a lovely seating area in the lobby, which we loved. There is a gym, sauna and two balconies with views of Tel Aviv.

Overall I would recommend, if it wasn’t for the bed I would have...