Because Why Not

Review of Mercure Wessex Hotel

Absolutely terrible. Awful. If I could give no sta...

Absolutely terrible. Awful. If I could give no stars I would. Don't waste the money and just avoid this place. We stayed for two nights and had three rooms, each one more expensive yet just as bad as the last.

The standard rooms on the first and second floors were uninhabitably hot (the night time temperature outside was between 10-15 degrees, so not even that warm), the food and parking were overpriced, all three rooms had stained sticky curtains, smelly armchairs, bald carpets, uncomfortable beds and peeling paint. Have actually come away from that place with a rash on my legs.

Paid extra for an upgrade to a room with air con which was just as ugly and run down as the other two and the air con didn't even work properly. Ridiculous.

The coffee was disgusting, the food looked so terrible and cost so much we went out to eat instead, the wifi and TV's didn't work properly and the window latches were broken in all three rooms.

The bathtubs were so old that they were covered in lime scale and black stuff (even in the premium room) and the ancient showers flooded the floors every time they were used. Both the bedrooms and bathrooms were so unbearably hot that showering was pointless anyway as we sweated the second we turned off the water.

The rooms are decorated like a 70's care home and calling them 'run-down' is putting it kindly. The staff clearly don't care about the attention to detail you would expect from a 4-star hotel, the disabled access is pretty much non-existent and one whole side of the building looks out onto the back end of the shops along the high street, so noise from lorries and plenty of dumpsters and delivery doors to look at.

The location close to the cathedral grounds and high street is the only good thing as it enables you to spend as little time in this horrible place as possible.

Would never ever stay again, not if you paid me. After this experience I would probably reconsider staying at any Mercure hotel. Needs a complete upgrade, if not to just be torn down and replaced with a far nicer looking and practical building. Considering how beautiful the rest of Winchester is, this building and everything inside it is outdated and ugly, completely out of place and overpriced.

I have never left any review for anything before, let alone such a poor one. But even some of the staff said the place was a complete mess and that they had a lot of complaints about the very low standards so I feel a bit more justified in giving my opinion.

Just to add insult to injury, the replies to any and all complaints in pretty much every poor review is a pretty rude "sorry not sorry we sucked, excuses excuses, here's how all the problems were not our fault, see you again soon after our inevitably delayed refurb!" Utterly infuriating and totally unacceptable.

4 stars is a complete lie. Health and safety was not up to scratch at all. Have stayed in better, cleaner hostels for a fraction of the silly amount we paid for 2 nights of no sleep in disgusting rooms.