MERCURE WESSEX WINCHESTER

My husband booked this hotel for a Saturday night so we could celebrate my birthday in Winchester. On arrival, the hotel and reception looked nice. We parked in the car park (£15 per night) and went to explore until it was time to check in. The cathedral was just a few minutes away, as was the main high street with access to shops, bars, restaurants and other attractions. A Saturday market was set up with some fabulous stalls. But on arrival back at the hotel at 3pm, the receptionist asked if we really wanted the room we had booked. Why? my husband asked her. Because it's quite compact and rather small she said. We said as we were only staying for one night it would be fine. She certainly wasn't offering us a free upgrade. But she wasn't kidding! After a maze of shabby corridors and common parts, we reached our room to find the smallest double bed ever shoved up against the wall (not ideal as we both visit the bathroom at least once during the night) and a dated chest of drawers and desk. The bathroom had a shower over the bath, but the bath enamel was badly chipped with an unsightly discolouration between the top of the bath and the tiles and the bottle of body wash was empty, so I used the shampoo as a shower gel instead. There was a hanging cupboard with 4 hangers and also a hairdryer, an ironing board and an iron. There was also coffee and tea making equipment with bottled water because of the recent heatwave. The whole overall impression though is that it was grubby, shabby and old fashioned. The corridors looked dirty and unkempt, with lots of chipped paintwork. One area looked like the communal room in a downmarket old people's home, with tatty, mismatched, winged back chairs all in a row. We didn't have breakfast at the hotel, which the lovely girl in the restaurant told us was £14 for the cooked version. Instead we went to that well known establishment a 10 minute walk away where the traditional cooked breakfast is only £5.29! Overall, the hotel is in an excellent location but needs a complete refurbishment to bring it up to 4 stars. In it's current state, it's only worthy of 2.5 stars.

Very poor Hotel, Not helpful at all They are also very unreasonable, Totally inconsiderate, had a death in the family and needed to cancel or reschedule, point blankly refused a refund and added another £86.66 for me to go another date, disgraceful service, There are many more better Hotels in the area AVOID this place, You have been warned

I'm only really echoing what many others have said, but I think that it's important to do so - if nothing else so that the company gets the message. I feel really sorry for the front desk staff as they're getting a lot of flak for things which aren't of their making and they can't rectify. Yes, the location is great and, to be fair, our bedroom wasn't bad. The bathroom, though, was old and grubby - especially the bath. The biggest bugbear is the breakfast - or rather lack of it. It's hard to say what's really going on, but it looks like they've more-or-less given up on it. No staff and no food. For what you get, it's very overpriced.