Mick Melvin

Review of Mecure South Staffordshire Hat...

Health Hazards and deceit at the Mercure Hatherton...

Health Hazards and deceit at the Mercure Hatherton House Hotel
My wife, my sister and I attended the funeral of a close relation in Penkridge during July 2018, and we chose to stay at the Mercure Hatherton House Hotel, we are all in our mid-seventies
During the course of our stay we experienced an incident with a very ill-tempered member of staff called Sharon Wright.
Shortly after arriving in the hotel, my sister who was staying in her own room came to our room and told me that there was a soiled bath towel thrown in the back of her wardrobe. I went to her room and examined the towel which clearly had been used by somebody before her. I advised her to report it to reception as soon as possible as I perceived it to be a health hazard.
The following morning my sister told me that the towel was still in the wardrobe. I accompanied my sister to reception and we met with Sharon Wright and asked if the towel could be removed. She informed me that the reason it had not been removed was that it had been left there in order that the cleaning staff could remove it on the following day.
I found this reason to be unreasonable as it was clearly a health hazard for my sister who is in poor health. When I pointed this out to Ms. Wright she became agitated and antagonistic and as we were leaving to attend the funeral I made a decision to let it drop.
When we arrived back in the hotel Ms. Wright was waiting for me by the door and immediately went on the offensive with me. She stopped me passing by and informed me in front of a number of guests in reception that she had examined the towel and claimed that it was not soiled but a clean towel that had been placed into the wardrobe as a spare.
Once again she became belligerent and she impressed upon me how important it was for me to examine the towel that she had removed from my sister s room. In an attempt to appease her anger I went with her behind the desk where she produced a perfectly clean and freshly pressed bath towel.
This was clearly not the same towel that I had seen in my sister s room, but I did not put up an argument and because of her confrontational manner, I resolved to write to the management about the incident when we returned home.
I only later found out that earlier she had approached my sister as she entered the hotel and confronted her in the same manner.
We were very unhappy throughout our stay at the Mercure Hatherton House Hotel and made to feel like second class citizens. We certainly were not made to feel welcome.
When I returned home I contacted customer services at Accor Hotels who, after contacting the hotel, initially agreed that we had cause for complaint. They later told me that they did not own the Mercure Hatherton House Hotel, but were only marketing it through their Accor Hotel chain therefore; they were unable to resolve my complaint.
This revelation came as a surprise to me, I believed that we were booking into a hotel owned and managed by the Accor Hotel Group. I consider that most people who book accommodation with Accor Hotels do so assuming that they have the backing of the world s largest chain of hotels.
We will not stay in an Accor Hotel again despite having done so many times in the past in many countries; neither would I recommend the chain to anyone else.