Mercure Amsterdam Airport, Amsterdam

...and booked me into the Mercure Amsterdam Airport at a price of Euro135 for the night. My first reaction was horror - but I calmed down once I realised I was confusing the Mercure with the Ibis (another in the Accor hotel chain) where I'd once spent a very noisy and uncomfortable night. Once I knew it wasn't the Ibis, I was fine and quite happy to save a load of money on the cost of a hotel closer to the airport.

===Getting There===
...the bus stop for the free hotel shuttle bus and found, to my horror, that it would be a 45 minute wait for the next bus so I decided to take a taxi. The driver clearly didn't want to take me and told me there was a shuttle. "Yes, I know" I told him, but it won't be here for 45 minutes and I'm not willing to wait. He swore blind the shuttle was every 10 minutes and he only gave up the fight when I insisted that if he didn't want to take ... more

Hotel airports are a drag. Hardly anyone really wants to stay in them and they never seem to try very hard to keep their clients happy because most don't come back very often. To me they are just a 'necessary evil' in the process of travel rather than places I'd actually choose to spend time (or for that matter money).

I've experienced three types of airport hotel. My favourite (probably because they are least common) are the hotels inside airports where transit passengers can hire a room for just a few hours to have a shower, a nap or watch TV - these are relatively rare and can be fantastic if you have a long connection time (I'm thinking of an 10 hour connection I once had in Kuala Lumpur. The second group are the ultra-expensive business hotels within a short stagger of the airport which are often used for business meetings and charge well over the odds for their proximity. And the third group - the Cinderellas of airport hotels - are the off-airport hotels, often offering cheap (or not so cheap) room and parking deals and far too often, not as close to the airport as you'd expect them to be.

Last week I needed a room for an overnight stop at Amsterdam airport and when the two hotels at the airport came back with ridiculous prices in the £250-350 per room range, our secretary put her foot down and booked me into the Mercure Amsterdam Airport at a price of Euro135 for the night. My first reaction was horror - but I calmed down once I realised I was confusing the Mercure with the Ibis (another in the Accor hotel chain) where I'd once spent a very noisy and uncomfortable night. Once I knew it wasn't the Ibis, I was fine and quite happy to save a load of money on the cost of a hotel closer to the airport.

Getting There

When I arrived on Thursday evening I hunted down the bus stop for the free hotel shuttle bus and found, to my horror, that it would be a 45 minute wait for the next bus so I decided to take a taxi. The driver clearly didn't want to take me and told me there was a shuttle. "Yes, I know" I told him, but it won't be here for 45 minutes and I'm not willing to wait. He swore blind the shuttle was every 10 minutes and he only gave up the fight when I insisted that if he didn't want to take me, I'd speak to the taxi supervisor and find someone who would. Sadly, this is pretty typical of the attitude of Amsterdam airport taxi drivers - if they aren't getting a high value fare, they just don't want to bother.

After my battle with the driver, I expected that it would be only a short distance to the hotel but it was not far short of a 10 minute drive along the motorway before we arrived and I was charged a shocking 17 Euros which made me wonder why the driver had been so reluctant - "money for old rope" was the thought that went through my mind. However, I was still glad to be there and not to have had to wait for the bus.

Checking In

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I was dropped by the security barrier and headed through the car park to the reception area and on entering my first impressions were quite positive. The public areas - restaurant, bar, seating areas - all looked clean and bright and the receptionist was very jolly and pleasant. She asked me to fill in some details, took my credit card, gave me a timetable for the shuttle bus for the next day. She pointed me in the direction of my room which was down a very long corridor to a lift that had seen better days and really did look more like a goods elevator than one for passengers. I think it's also worth commenting that the corridor had the ugliest carpet that I've seen in a long time. I actually raised it with the receptionist the next day and she rolled her eyes and said "Everybody says that" - so it's not just me being picky. Apparently it had only been in place for about 3 months and had made a big but very negative impact.

The Room

My room was fine - not the biggest I've been in but totally adequate for a short stay and lets be honest, you aren't going to book an airport hotel for a long stay, are you? The room was clean, quite bright and had good lighting and a window that actually opened. Looking out as I opened the window, there were rabbits playing on the grass outside - you could almost imagine you were in the countryside. I got a warm and fuzzy glow of pleasure watching these little furry critters bounding around on the grass.

In addition to a large bed with a really ugly green and blue chequered bed cover with an insert of yellow, blue and read tartan, there were bedside tables on either side, an armchair and coffee table, a desk, a TV table and a large wardrobe with spare pillows and blankets, a safe and a minibar inside. There was a wall-mounted trouser press as well. The carpet was in poor faded condition with a pattern of red dots on a dark (but fading) blue background. The curtains - as is essential in an airport hotel - had black-out linings.

In the bathroom I found the standard curved Accor-hotels sink unit, a bath with shower over and a loo. The towel supply was a bit mean and I had to raid the wardrobe for another towel but the toiletries were plentiful and of good quality. The water was hot and the pressure was fine. The TV had a good selection of stations - which in my book means both BBC1 and BBC2; always a bonus when you go to Holland although I have no idea why the news came with the local news from Belfast.

Noise from outside was minimal but I was disturbed in the night by rowdy guests in the corridors. When I mentioned it to the receptionist, she said they had a few large parties in and those tend to be the worst offenders in that respect. I guess that makes sense - travellers on their own have nobody to shout at.

In the morning I skipped breakfast so I can't tell you if it was good or not. I'd arranged to meet someone at the hotel for a meeting and this seems to be pretty typical of the way in which people use the Mercure; in fact, they've even set up a 'Meeting Point' system with desks, power supplies and some refreshments. Since I couldn't work out if this was something I had to book or pay for, we had our meeting in the bar with a few coffees instead and we had the place to ourselves. After my guest left, I had another coffee, sat out on the terrace by the garden and made the most of a rare sunny day before checking out and taking the shuttle to the airport.

Check-out

My check-out was a bit muddled because I'd not been charged for all the coffees, despite having asked the guy to make sure it went through quickly. Instead I got billed for an orange juice I hadn't had so it took a few minutes to sort out the muddle but the receptionist was pleasant throughout - probably amazed that someone complained they hadn't been charged enough! Whilst we were waiting for the bill to be fixed, two ladies came to check in and I overheard the receptionist telling them that on weekends, the hotel runs a shuttle service to the centre of Amsterdam for just 4 euros - which seemed like a bargain compared to my taxi ride.

Getting back to the airport

The ten minute taxi drive of the night before metamorphosed into a half hour magical mystery tour in the shuttle bus as the driver wound his way round all the other hotels in the Accor chain - off to the Novotel, the Ibis, the Etap as well as a miscellaneous stop at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere where a policewoman got on. As the bus goes only every hour and takes half an hour to get to the airport, make sure you build this into your calculations for getting your flight on time. I'm still glad that despite the cost of the taxi, I didn't waste all my evening getting to the hotel when I arrived.

It's worth considering that in the hour and a half that it could take you to get to the airport if you'd just missed the previous shuttle, you could book a hotel near a railway station at quite a considerable distance from the airport, and get a cheaper deal and be at the airport in the same amount of time.

Summary

I have mixed feelings about the hotel. On the positive side, the price was OK, the staff were nice, the room was fine, the gardens were pretty on a sunny day and it was a good, convenient place to have a meeting. On the negative side, the distance from the airport made it either very expensive or very time consuming to get back and forth, the shuttle service was infrequent and if you had an early flight or were pushed for time, it wouldn't be suitable. There's also really not much to do in the area if you don't have transport. But on balance, I wouldn't be horrified if I had to stay there again.

A final tip for anyone who's still seething about taxi drivers who don't want to take you. If you are at a UK airport and you only want to go a short distance, be sure to find the taxi 'marshall' or steward - usually a guy in a safety vest with something on his back to identify him. When you need a short journey, you find the steward, tell him the situation and he pulls a driver from the back of the queue or takes the number of your driver so he can jump the queue when he comes back. You just tell the driver you are a 'Bell Job' (it's a technical taxi-term) and they should take you without any aggro. 

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