Mercure Telford Madeley Court Hotel 3 stars

Lovely overnight stay for my husband's birthday. I emailed the hotel for a room in the main hotel & this is what I got. Got a great price for dinner, bed & breakfast.

Good value on the Accor website, only stayed 1 night room only. Staff were helpful, room was spacious, location is okay if you are driving. Online check-in and check-out was seamless. Overall a pleasanr experience.

Friendly staff from reception through to checkout. Very simple process for booking and check in.

The breakfast was lovely. I appreciate that I only paid just under £60 for my one night stay on Monday night and therefore knew my room would not look like the ones on your website. However, after a sleepless night due to a generator/ noisy heating system buzzing away, holes in the sheets on my bed, cracked bathroom tiles, peeling paint, broken bin, dodgy mixertap shower system which was difficult to reach under the eaves and meant that when you dared to stand up with the shower head, the pipe knocked the cold tap off and I burnt myself, I was struggling to remain positive. As I was only staying from 9pm to 9.10am the following day, I didn't request a change but did share my thoughts on checking out. The reply was ' I'm sorry to hear that'. As I needed to get away, I left and didn't pursue any further.

A very impressive building and hotel albeit the new section of the hotel was a bit 'tired' and could have done with a good clean / decoration. Having said that my room was clean and spacious (room 31). The highlight of the stay was the breakfast the service received from the staff member. The breakfast was the best full english I've had in a hotel chain. This was further enhanced by the member of staff on duty that morning (might have been Linda?) who was simply magnificent. She added a 'can't do enough' attitude and pre-empted our every need. Excellent.

Lovely spacious room only fault was limescale on the shower head.

Our reservation was for a superior room. But this had been allocated to somebody else, which we only found out afterwards. Reception ordered taxi for us. Taxi arrived but we were in bar and nobody came looking for us and we were none the wiser. After half hour we then had to reorder but late for family party.

Helpful staff, amazing old place

Excellent

Couldn’t easily book multiple rooms so-called central team clearly outside of uk - which is fine but they couldn’t understand my simple request for 3 rooms of different durations without multiple repeating - not ok! It took over 20 mins to book the 3 rooms so not best customer experience to start with. My perception of Mercure chain after staying in this hotel is a budget business that looks for the cheapest staff/ service provision and doesn’t train to deliver good service. Boiler broke 1st morning. Returned after a run and reception knew - these things happen - BUT no proactive suggestions - i had to suggest they found me another room with hot water which they then did. And moved me for next 2 nights to much better room. However this sums it up - inexperienced front of house with little initiative left to run the show. 3rd night returned late from client meeting at 10.45 having not eaten couldn’t rustle anything up - asked for cheese and biscuits - no not even a sandwich. Don’t need a chef to assemble some cheese and biscuits! Attention to detail poor - menus have plastic folders that are dirty and bent up inside - cost pence to replace - but clearly lack of ownership and leadership to things they should be on top of. Food not great - big portions but nothing properly seasoned, risotto masses of cream added - 2 of us left almost all of our bit no-one enquired why. Missed opportunities to learn and improve. Shared view of people I spoke to who live in Telford was this is not a great hotel and they don’t recommend. Such a shame as beautiful building, nice bar and both women who served breakfast were really helpful and nice. Nothing awful but a big chain should be on top these basics if they want a sustainable business. Was cheap but to be honest that’s all it is worth - but a few small changes and investing in front of house training, helping staff to pre-empt problems and guest requests and how to positively react etc would make a massive difference. I am a business transformation consultant- and this is free advice for the type of thing that my clients pay a lot of money for - I hope you take note of it!

Comfortable. Nice room

We were disappointed with the room which was very tired. The armchair was tatty. The bathroom was very tired. There was mildew in the shower and the shower curtain was long overdue a wash. The towels were very small and obviously very old. We had to accept this room as it had the only accessible shower. We had very good service from two of your staff members particularly - Leslie at breakfast service who went above and beyond to help us and Farah at dinner who made the evenings a success. We have to say that the meal we had on Friday night was very good. However, the Saturday night meal was NOT AT ALL GOOD. The food was badly presented and one dish was frankly almost inedible, (overcooked fish and arid mashed potatoes). We understand there were different chefs preparing the meals on different nights. We cannot fault the other staff at all.

The experience was good. Pleasant staff, confortable bed, warm room, great food. nit picking but the bathtubs could really do with updating. although they are clean - it just does not come across very well. Also would have been great to have a shower screen/curtain.

Food was acceptable, service was fun but slow and a bit overpowering at breakfast but overall a good stay. Comfortable beds. Nice bar area to chat with family and friends. Nothing too much trouble for reception staff.

Excellent staff Efficient check in Just short on supplies at bar for New Year’s Eve