Mercure Brighton Seafront Hotel — Hotel in Great Britain

I stayed at the Mercure Brighton Seafront Hotel over Christmas. The website states “This four-star, newly renovated seafront hotel is one of the finest hotels Brighton has to offer.” Believe me, Brighton has a great many much better hotels to offer. I have stayed in better two star hotels than this. Accessibility is non-existent. There are 6 steps to get into the hotel and no handrail. There are two sets of lifts, one of which has a set of several stairs to get to it. Neither lift accesses all floors or all rooms. I was on the first floor and when I got out of the lift I then had to carry my case up a number of stairs to my room. From the lounge there are two long flights of stairs down to the toilets and two flights up to get to the ballroom where we ate Christmas lunch. My room was large, the bathroom and bedding was clean. There were several cracked tiles in the bathroom. The whole ceiling was cracked and paint was flaking off the walls. The nets at the window were black, there was a spillage stain on the floor, and a hole in the bedspread. Despite the radiator being off, the room was very hot. I constantly had to have the window open and the fan running. On the 24th December I got up to have a shower to find that the water in both the basin and shower was freezing cold despite running it for a good 10 minutes. There was no one on Reception to report it to. After breakfast Reception said their maintenance person would fix it. On arrival back at the hotel there was a card saying it had been fixed. There was hot water in the basin so I assumed it would also run in the shower. On the 25th December the shower was freezing despite running it for 30 minutes. I phoned Reception and spoke to Kelly the General Manager. I pointed out that I had been assured that this was fixed yesterday and that I had not had a hot shower for two days. She replied that the engineer was on his way but didn’t know how long he would be. She said she might be able to find me an empty room so that I could at least have a hot shower. Kelly said she would come back to me. I waited for 30 minutes and heard nothing. So I rang Reception and received no reply. I waited five minutes and rang again – still no reply. I got dressed and went downstairs to Reception. There was nobody around so I put my finger on the bell and kept it there. Kelly came flying out of the office shouting at me to stop ringing the bell, “we can hear you.” I pointed out that she was going to come back to me but I hadn’t heard from her. I had no hot water for two days. I had rung Reception but no one replied. Kelly then started repeating “Good morning. Merry Christmas. Good morning. Merry Christmas.” This was bizarre, bearing in mind that this was part way through my second conversation of the day with her. She then said, “And as big as you think you are…” and proceeded to tell me that her priority is “my hotel” and that she had other problems to deal with - some lights had gone out – which I could see was the case in the bar and part of the lounge. I expect a General Manager to at least have some customer service skills and not to be rude, aggressive, dismissive and unhelpful to guests. If there had been any transport on Christmas Day I would have packed up and left at that point. Just as I finished breakfast the engineer arrived and adjusted the shower thermostat up to 50° to get hot water. I managed to have a hot shower for the first time. The restaurant had the aircon blasting out cold air and it was a buffet. The food was average with limited choice and not very warm. For Christmas lunch our table of nine was provided with a dish of cold vegetables, enough for four people. We also had a dish of roast potatoes half of which were burnt. The turkey was also cold, tough and tasteless. The quarter of a carrot and quarter of a parsnip that I had was overcooked, very soft and could be bent in half. The two brussels sprouts were like bullets. They had run out of cranberry sauce. The cheesecake was horrible. Our menu stated we would have cheese and biscuits, we...

Dilapidated hotel - Bring your own bucket to flush the toilet!! The staff were friendly, initially at least, and the check-in process was pleasant. We were informed that we would be staying in a charming room on the third floor. After a seven hour drive, that sounded good and up we went. The hotel looked well established and we felt optimistic that the stay would be a pleasant one; little did we know. The room was moderately sized, with a spare bed to one side and a step-down to the bathroom. That is where any pleasantness ended, sadly. The bed had an incline down to the head, which did not bode well and, indeed, we got very little sleep as a consequence, but worse was to come. The bathroom looked a little tired and dilapidated with chipped paint and dark brown/black mouldy grout in the shower area. That could have been overlooked, were it not for the toilet. I suspect few would disagree that, at the very least, a hotel room should provide a reasonable bed and a working toilet. The mercure in Brighton clearly does not subscribe to this principle and the toilet simply would not flush. We tried pumping the lever, made difficult by the rather silly layout, but nothing would work. In the end, we had to resort to using the inner bucket from the sanitary bin, filled in the sink and thrown down the pan!! After a sleepless night, I took a member of the management team aside and quietly explained that this was completely unacceptable and that even the idea of having a conversation about toilets with the staff, in this context, was totally barbaric and offensive. He suggested that we should go and have breakfast while he check it out!! Meanwhile, my poor partner wants to use the loo and, rather than providing a new room immediately, he suggests that she go and use the disabled facilities downstairs!! Madness, utter madness! After another bucket session, we had breakfast and I tried to find out what the management were going to do about it and it seemed they were going to move us to another, more pleasant, room, later. I explained that my partner suffers with panic attacks and needs a base; blank, does not compute. We were in Brighton for a break, to recuperate a little before Christmas. Instead, we had to endure a sleepless night in a wonky bed in a room with no toilet facilities. Eventually, at around 14:00, we were advised that the replacement room was ready and that we had been upgraded to a sea-view room. She seemed to think we should feel grateful for this, which was rather bizarre. By now, not only were we rather tired but feeling jaded and frustrated, too. The "premium" room was better and had a level bed and a working toilet and less mould in the shower. Hurray!! An afternoon and one night remaining, we'd really have time to appreciate that!! The website boasts an à la carte menu. Strictly speaking, that was true, in the same sense that a café or burger bar serves à la carte food. Don't go to the mercure for fine dining, you will be disappointed. The menu is very limited and, unless you like burgers or fish and chips, uninteresting. The kicker came at the end, on checkout. We had to pay for the privilege of staying in the decrepit and run-down room with the sloping bed and broken toilet! Yes, it is true, the management considered it perfectly reasonable to make their guests pay to stay in such unsanitary and distasteful conditions. And just to be absolutely clear; it is completely impossible for the management NOT to have been fully aware of the broken state of the facilities. The cleaning Staff would have mentioned it to their managers and their managers would have escalated the matter. No rational person would expect to inflict such conditions onto a paying Guest! Which means that senior management knew and chose an alternative to making the room unavailable while they get a plumber to put things right.

UPDATE I was very disappointed to read the general manager's responses to the review of the mecure hotel in Brighton, which included no hint...

Stayed at the Mercure Brighton seafront with a group of friends for two nights 9th-11th August.

The location of the hotel is perfect right on the seafront and there was paid parking nearby. Having said that the hotel car park itself is very badly designed and very small with very limited parking.

Overall as a group we were very disappointed in the stay overall. The pictures online are very deceptive and not a true reflection of what the rooms are like. I Stayed in room 404. The general layout of the hotel also did not make any sense especially the stairways.

Let’s start with check in, myself and my friend went to quickly greet our other group of friends who were also staying at the hotel in the bar whilst my friends partner stood at reception to check in. He was spoken to nicely however once my friend and I approached the check in desk next to him the lady at reception was quite frankly rude it was more her tone towards my friend and I than what she was saying. My friend and I are Indian and her partner is White.

The Rooms are very small. The bathroom is also very small and cleanliness was clearly not a priority it seemed like the bathroom was not cleaned properly. The carpet was old and shabby. There was no iron provided. The fan provided was not enough to keep cool especially considering the weather was really hot this weekend and the window also opened slightly not allowing enough fresh air into the room. The toilet is placed right next to the bathroom door with a very small gap between the toilet and the door so it would hit you in your face if you leave it open whilst using the toilet quickly. The shower cubicle door opens inwards so you have to maneuver around in an awkward position just to close the door and use the shower which can be really difficult when the shower is literally one small square cubical. Considering the price paid for the room it is not worth it at all. The rooms are dated old smelly and quite frankly inadequate.

We went down to join the rest of the group at the bar at which point we were informed we had 10mins to order a drink before they closed the bar. We got some drinks and our friends had some food delivered. The bar staff told our friends they could not eat in there even though it’s a restaurant/ bar. I questioned the gentleman at the bar about their kitchen and if they were still serving food to which his response was no their kitchen was closed so I asked what the problem was and why my friends were unable to eat there considering we had bought drinks from the bar. He said our policy is no food in the bar/ Restaurant. If we wanted to eat we needed to go and sit outside in the lobby in reception and eat there. Any hotel I have ever been to has never ever asked someone to go to the reception lobby and eat there instead of the restaurant area.

So once they “closed” the bar or should I say told to leave the bar we all went and sat in the lobby as told shortly after the reception staff continuously kept coming upto us saying we were “talking too loud” had we stayed in the bar it wouldn’t have been as bad and we would not be disturbing the other guests so much when all we were doing was relaxing and talking eventually we got told to leave and go to our rooms. we went to one of our friends rooms and continued our night just relaxing, talking and around an hour later the reception staff knocked on the bedroom door and asked if he could see our key cards and if we were all staying in the hotel. Why on earth would we be hanging around if we were not staying at the hotel?

Anyway so the day we checked out my friend wanted some water which was empty and went to the reception desk just to inform them that it was empty and request for some water so she could take some painkillers only to be questioned if she was a guest at the hotel. For what reason was she being questioned about being a guest when all she wanted was a glass of water and to inform them the water was finished.

In conclusion, will never...