EME Catedral Mercer Hotel — Hotel in Seville

We booked EME back in september 2018 for our nuptial night (and another 2 nights after that) in Seville. We booked what was supposed to be their nicest suite with Jacuzzi and Cathedral view. Prior to our stay, we tried to visit the suite multiple times to have an idea of what it is on multiple separate occasions (while planning the wedding. Every time we would organise with the hotel and last minute they would cancel on us. Unsurprisingly so, as the suite is absolutely disgusting (filthy and very dark). If we would have seen it ahead of time, we would have definitely cancelled it. Our experience was far worse than just a terrible room...We had booked for the night of our wedding, a nuptial decoration package (roses and candles for 50€), on arrival, there were 3 petals and a couple of unlit candles, extremely disappointing. The room was extremely noisy, the curtains did not close, all in all we barely got any sleep. Breakfast in the room arrived cold and the tray was all chipped and dirty...not very 5-star. We asked to change room and got relocated to a much smaller room that still had no curtains. It's only after checking-in and taking a shower that we found an ant invasion in the bathroom. We advised reception, but it did not seem to bother them that much. Sleep was impossible in this room due to very poor noise insulation, we could hear any little noise from the street. The whole point of this room was the jacuzzi, which we were unable to use as the water was dirty. A member of staff came to change it, but it took more than an hour to empty and refill and by that time we had to get ready for dinner. This room was over 600€ a night, absolutely wasted. We spoke with the director, Francisco Reina, who said that he would compensate us for the terrible experience, including a refund for the inexistent nuptial decoration, yet nothing came of this. He wasted months of our time saying he could not do much himself but would reach out to the owners (we are very surprised a Hotel Director cannot compensate clients for such a poor experience) - and a few months later announced that the hotel had been sold to new owners and that we should keep pursuing the old owners for a potential compensation ... absolutely ridiculous and unprofessional. This was such an important moment for us and this whole stay was totally miserable for us. WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND NOT STAYING AT EME CATEDRAL HOTEL. If you are looking for a wonderful hotel in Seville, we recommend Alfonso XIII. We stayed there before our wedding day and everything was absolutely perfect - amazing rooms, hotel, service. Any basic room at Alfonso XIII is much better than the most pricey room in this joke of EME Catedral. PS: Some of our guests stayed at EME as well and they all had a...

Response to hotel comment below: 11/01/2023 First, it was NOT clear at time of booking that parking was non-refundable as part of a special rate package. I think this is misleading -- when I go to your website and book a non-refundable room and add parking, there is no additional discount applied to the room as part of a package. Parking is clearly an add on. Every other hotel where I have had parking, it is treated as a separate service. Regardless of this, while I understand you are busy, it took over a week for guest services to respond to my initial question on parking. It was only at my follow up at the hotel on check in, and then again days later, that I got a response. At that point, it was a day before our check out, so we had little time to use your offer of applying a credit to other services. And there was no attempt to offer a goodwill adjustment to our bill. This is terrible customer service. All my other comments regarding the poor quality of the hotel facilities and room stand separate from the issue of parking and customer service.

Original review: 10/31/2023 We were very disappointed in this hotel and were surprised how it could possibly be rated 5 star compared with other 4 star hotels where we stayed in Madrid, Cadiz, Granada and Cordoba. During our month-long trip through southern Spain, this was by far our worst hotel experience. Specifically to note, the rooms and common area appeared to lack adequate maintenance and were shoddy for the standards of a 5 star hotel. The breakfast area was in an odd, dark location and not at all welcoming. The room was noisy and right above a bar on the second floor and lacked basic functional items such as towel racks and places for clothing in addition to being extremely plain. Worst was the lack of customer service. We inquired about our plans for not using parking several days before checking in and didn’t receive a response from guest services. In the end, we were charged $50 a day for parking that we didn’t use and told it was nonrefundable the day before checking out. After several complaints, there was no effort to accommodate us even though this was not clear at the time of booking and there was no response when asked for clarification...

Overall my partner and I were disappointed with our experience at this hotel. The rooftop pool is the main attraction to the hotel and used as the front photo on every booking site so we booked purely based off of this however when we arrived we discovered that the pool had been shut due to a fault. We were not informed of this closure before our stay or during check in which I firstly found to be unprofessional.

After going down to reception we were told by staff it would be a couple of days (it ended up being our entire stay) before it reopened and in the meantime we could use the indoor pool.

We were very disappointed about this as a dark dingy shallow indoor pool wasn't what we had paid for or expected when choosing this hotel but appreciated that faults happen and it was just unlucky for us! However when checking out on Friday the front desk staff tried to charge us an extra 100 euros for using this pool. After explaining that we were never informed of any charges before using the pool or any time during our stay, they tried to tell us that we could have used the outdoor pool in a sister company hotel (which was infuriating to hear as we would have loved to do this but (once again) we were not told about other pool access!!). It was only after complaining about the rooftop being out of use and not being told about charges multiple times that they agreed to take the charge off (but only after trying to half it first and make us pay 50).

The fact that they even considered charging anyone for indoor pool access when the rooftop pool is out of use is absolutely crazy, if anything guests should be compensated not scammed out of more money! As this was our first time travelling alone it was incredibly distressing and ruined the final day of our trip. Please be careful when going to this hotel as I felt like they saw us an easy target for money grabbing as we were young couple!

Other than that the hotel was adequate however I expected a lot more from a 5 star hotel. The bed was terribly uncomfortable our bedding had rips in it and there were no tea or coffee facilities which i would have expected as standard. On the plus side the location was very good aswell as bathroom facilities, the rooftop bar was...