Mercure Paris Porte de Pantin Hotel

Decent hotel at the outskirts of Paris, just a few steps away from a metro line. I arrived a little bit early and had to wait for the room, but the front office personnel was attentive enough and offered some refreshments. The room was ok, although the hotel should consider slight refurbishment at least.

This Mercure is rated as 4* / 3* depending on the site you view. I've stayed at many, many hotels across the globe, from the USA to Nigeria and this was by far the WORST. The room is not 3*, it's scraping 2* Cleanliness was non existent. The rooms general condition was awful. There clearly hasn't been any maintenance performed in a very long time. It's a good hotel if you looking for somewhere cheap to stay and don't care about anything other than saving some euros. In hindsight we would've preferred to spend a little bit more and stay elsewhere, but we were expecting more as the reviews have generally been good and the photos look OK. Both are very deceiving. The photos are photoshopped and I have serious doubts about the authenticity of some of the reviews. And no, the aircon does not work. Staff were friendly.

The worst hotel I've ever stayed at. The rooms are dated and filthy and it's as if the rooms haven't been maintained since the hotel first went up. The carpets are nasty, the walls filthy. If you're looking for a cheap place to stay and don't care about anything other than a place to sleep then this is it. If you're looking for something decent and affordable then this isn't it. We were looking for the latter, we booked it because the reviews were decent (4.5* on Accors site - yeah right, I'm sure they delete all negative reviews, lets see if mine gets p!) and pricing was good. We were expecting something around 3 stars, this hotel barely scrapes 2 stars.

Friendly staff, quite extensive breakfast. Airco was broken, even after being reassured at the reception, the second night we had no airco either. Rooms at the street side are noisy with open windows (which didn't help with a broken airco).

We are two people in our 60s and 70s who came to Paris for a week to visit museums and galleries in the centre of the city: Mercure Porte de Pantin proved to be too far away - the metro is fast but not supersonic. We under-estimated the time we would need to get from A to B and this negatively impacted our entire stay. So for instance it really wasn't feasible to come back to the hotel for the hottest hours of the afternoon, nor to eat out late and then return on the metro. So ...our first impression of the hotel - the entrance hall is nice with some fun design; it is welcoming and colors etc are good. The outside area is more like a tired suburban garden than the outside area of a 4-star hotel but I think it is appropriate for where the hotel is situated ... and we don't mind tired suburban gardens - especially when there is a cat. The concerts and music on Wednesday night were not to our taste but we thought it a nice initiative as it involved local musicians. The breakfast area is totally non-Covid safe .. everything is far too close together. I felt anxious at breakfast time ... too many people, too much touching things and too small spaces. I would have preferred staff to have been wearing masks. We both tested positive to Covid when we returned to Florence ... eating is risky in times of Covid especially when tables are close together. I don't know the answer - perhaps breakfast in the room but the room is not equipped for this. Where possible we tried to eat outside. I am not saying we caught covid at the hotel - maybe we did, maybe we didn't - but I think it is impossible to say you are taking all possible measures for people's health and well-being without radically changing the breakfast lay-out and organization and avoiding crowding of people eg around the slow-functioning coffee machine. The standard rooms like ours (402) are not equipped for breakfast eating. Breakfast was OK. I enjoyed eating banana jam for the first time, I enjoyed the fruit salad (not the unpeeled apples in it though) and the yoghourt and apple puree. My two criticisms would be: 1. the bread - "pretend healthy" bread that is hard to digest ... a bread made with dough that has risen naturally (lievitazione natural in Italian), even a white loaf made the old-fashioned way would be nicer that the bread provided and 2. the coffee situation. The coffee machine was partly broken almost the whole time. There was always a cluster of people around the machine and coffee was slow in coming and not very nice. And maybe you use long-life milk? I know that everyone has their own idea of the perfect coffee (me, I am boring and just like the little Moka on the stove) but perhaps a jug of piping hot filter coffee in a different position would at least help the queue around the coffee machine. Also the hot water in the jugs was not boiling hot, obviously, so tea made with it was very weak and tasteless. It would also make breakfast a bit more "exciting" if the pastries on offer varied throughout the week. We thought the daily menu for lunch and dinner was adequate and reasonably priced. The room - we really appreciated a window that we could open. The aircon we switched on for two minutes and it sounded ancient and distressed so we turned it off. The window was always open -that was great. We felt safer than with ancient aircon. The design of the room with the cupboard door of the safe and window both opening in the same place took some getting used to - poor design. I appreciated the hanging space for clothes. The lighting was good and the reading lights in bed were great. I thought the TV was too large for the room but others would doubtless disagree. The carpet was very tired but I understand that now is not the time for improvements In a 4-star hotel - in any hotel dare I say - it is not acceptable that there is no soap, only hand wash in the shower, no shower-caps ... all can be had on request but that is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! Once you leave the bathroom you forget to ask for then etc. or you go to ask and there is a queue at the reception. Yours is also the first hotel (of any star level) where I was expected to collect and return iron and ironing board myself. I was told there were only two available ... we survived and it is no big deal but it is not a characteristic of a 4 star hotel. The step down from the shower is uncomfortably steep. The towel rails are insufficient for the number of towels. we like to reuse our towels but if you can't spread them out they don't dry. One hook will work for one towel so the bathroom - "our" bathroom in 402 - was two rails short The bed linen is not comfortable for the summer: synthetic mattress and pillow covers and bed-linen that is 60% cotton and 40% polyester make you sweat and the inside of the top sheet was full of a horrid polyester "blanket" which would seem totally inappropriate for the summer. So every morning we woke up drenched in sweat and in fact when we got the first symptoms of Covid we thought it was a chill caused by the breeze from the window on our sweaty bodies. Overall our stay was OK but we won't come again because the hotel is too far out. I booked in March through Very Chic who seem to be doing a lot of deals with Mercure and other Accor hotels at the moment - your questionnaire does not cover all possibilities so to continue with the survey I have answered "non so"