Grand Mercure Phuket Patong — Hotel in Patong

Tourists who will ruin their Phuket vacation with broken air conditioners and mold, and tourists who want to experience the rude of ignoring and hanging up the phone by themselves, I recommend you to go to GRAND MERCURE HOTEL. I am at the hotel now. I checked in two days ago. As soon as I entered the room, it was so cold that I turned off the air conditioner. The room was too humid, smelly of mold, and it didn't get warm, so I asked for a room change. However, it was rejected because there was no room. I set the air conditioner controller temperature to 32 degrees, set it to the lowest air volume, and then turned it off. Still, it was cold, so we dressed in three layers, wore a mask, and slept. The next day was also freezing, and we made sure the air conditioner was turned off. The controller was turned off and there was still a cold wind. I contacted the front, but after a while, the engineer said he was going to send me something hard and then left the room. After about three hours, it was still cold and it got colder, so I contacted the front again. Boko answered the phone and said he was sending an enginener, but he didn't come. I called again and asked, and after a long time, the engineer came. The engineer didn't speak English and he was alone. He pulled out the card key that cuts off the electricity and plugged it back in. Then he said he did the reset and fixed it. When he left, we were still suspicious. So I pulled out the card key that cuts off the electricity and decided to sleep. Unfortunately, when I pulled the card key, the lights and electricity went out and the air conditioner started working. We were very confused. I called the front desk and BOKO answered. She just said she would send an engineer. There were too many engineers and we had to call back. BOKO hung up laughing out loud while I was talking. I called back and told her why I hung up during the conversation, but she didn't apologize. When I went to the front desk, Boko ignored our conversation and didn't answer, saying she was working. And I also had a long talk with the BEER manager, but there was only BOKO's voice with a glaring and sarcastic tone and the manager BEER without a solution. Tomorrow morning I will find a solution with the manager BEER (DUTY MANAGER) DIRECTOR OF ROOMS, so I will write my second review after that. It's such a shame that there isn't a single employee in this hotel who can turn off the air conditioning. Also, no one has been able to deal with this for two days. I'm also very sorry that some employees laugh at and ignore calls from customers asking for repairs. I hope no one will be harmed like me after today and I'll see how my problem will be resolved. I hope this hotel won't ruin our three-month...

My wife and I stayed here on our trip to Thailand. This was the 3rd hotel on our itinerary. The first two hotels we stayed at were comparable in terms of “luxury” and amenities, but the Grand Mercure was a severe let down from what we had come to expect from our Thailand hotel experience. There was a stark change from the warmth and welcome we had received from staff at our other hotels. There was nothing overtly wrong with the staff and service, it was just okay. Maybe we had gotten spoiled from the other hotels. The bellman who helped us to our room with our luggage, however, was amazing, I wish I had got his name. After about an hour in our room, we started smelling smoke coming thru the air vent. We were in a non smoking room. We called the front desk to see what we could do about it, no apology, they said they’d send someone up. We didn’t know what they had in mind, and when the employee got to our room, he had a can of “room spray” air freshener that he intended to spray to mask the smell. I told him thank you but that spraying would not fix the problem. We don’t want to be in a room with smoke in it, period. So we called back again and said we need to change rooms. Again, no apology, but they did let us change rooms. The staff response to this was something like, indifference. The pool bar is nice, and the food is pretty good too. There are a small number of lounge chairs in the water, but you can’t have your belongings with you unless you want them floating away. The dry lounge chairs are in a different area that is oddly segregated from the pool. If someone wanted to take your belongings that you left at your chair while you’re at the pool bar or floating around, it would be too easy. We came to encounter a few food service staff who were lovely and I’m glad they are there to brighten up your day. The biggest deal breaker of the hotel was the ongoing bursts of fireworks that went off throughout the night, every night. I never found out where they were coming from but it must have been just outside the hotel property. Exploding and whistling fireworks about every20-30 minutes… hard to sleep. In the end, we didn’t like Phuket - too touristy and as soon as you exit the hotel property you are inundated with pushy taxi drivers and street vendors. It’s unrelenting and not a pleasant place to walk around, unless you like being harassed and pestered to the point of insanity. There is no cultural significance to the area, it’s strictly a tourist and party destination. That said, the Mercure is on the extreme nice end of hotels in the area, so maybe it’s the best you can get if your staying in Patong Beach. I’d say just skip Phuket altogether. Chiang Mai and Bangkok were our favorite...

How this is rated a 5-star hotel, I do not know. Upon arrival, the bed sheets and upholstered furniture smelt musty and felt damp. We switched the air con on and hoped that would help. When we returned to the room after a couple hours and the whole room had a damp, musty smell (the candle they’d hidden under the luggage rack had blown out to reveal the actual smell of the room). When we opened the guest information book it was covered in patches of mould, and then, after hanging our clothes up a couple hours earlier, discovered that the wardrobe, too, had patches of mould around the bottom. A massive health issue, especially for those with respiratory problems, and just plain unacceptable for a so-called ‘luxury’ hotel. We went down to reception and explained the issue, yet they seemed to be unaware of any such issues as damp. The member of staff didn’t apologise, he just asked if we wanted to change rooms and spent a while talking on the phone and with colleagues trying to arrange it. We were moved to a smaller room, despite the inconvenience caused by moving in the first place because of an issue that was not our fault. Again, the room was damp. It was late at night so we had little choice but to stay in the room - plus it seemed like every room would have the same issue by this point. We asked for a dehumidifier in the morning, but again they acted as though they didn’t understand our request or the issue we were addressing. However, funnily enough, a few hours later upon our return from an excursion, huge dehumidifier machine was running in our room - the water tank already full. What further consolidates this is that we actually joined two family members at this hotel who, upon us telling them we would have to move rooms because of damp, told us that they also had to move rooms because of issues with damp (their second room already had a dehumidifier in it!). This proves that the hotel DOES in fact know there is a damp problem, but made us feel like we were the first people to ever mention it when we addressed them. (I can now see from other reviews that we were indeed not the first people to experience these issues.) When contacting Agoda regarding the issues faced during our stay, the hotel responded that we had never addressed the issue with the hotel directly… a complete and utter lie considering we had to change rooms and make requests for a dehumidifier! I would definitely avoid this hotel and find somewhere else that isn’t full of damp and mould… I have attached photos to exemplify all of this so that others can make a more...