Mercure Brighton Hotel, Brighton

I recently spent three nights in Brighton with my daughter, a place which we have visited many times in the past. I usually stay at the Premier Inn in the city but on this occasion found a better deal at the Mercure Brighton Seafront hotel, paying just shy of £250 for their “Time to Tan” package which offered 3 nights bed and breakfast along with a welcome gift for the regular price of two nights bed and breakfast.

Location

Unsurprisingly, given the hotel’s name, it is located on the seafront in Brighton, on the western side of the city just before Brighton becomes Hove. The actual address is 149 Kings Road.

This part of the seafront is much quieter than the area around the Palace Pier and if you want to find shops and restaurants then you have to walk ten minutes uphill to reach the main shopping area on Western Road via Bedford Street, or walk a little further along the seafront to Preston Street which takes you up to Western Road and is filled with bars and restaurants on the way.

If you love the beach and prefer a quieter part of it then the location is ideal, with a lovely pebble beach along with splash pool and promenade and the sad wreck of the West Pier all just across the (albeit busy) road.

First Impressions

The hotel is a large period property which has a small car park at the front. We arrived by taxi and were welcomed at the spacious lobby area warmly. We were a little earlier than the designated check in time of 2.00pm but this wasn’t a problem with a room being available for us.

We received two key cards for the room and a helpful staff member showed us the way which was just as well as the hotel seems to be a bit of a warren hole with lots of nooks and crannies. I did notice that the level of finish in the decor started to deteriorate a little the further we got from the reception, particularly the paint on the skirting boards.

It wasn’t until I got to the room that I realised we hadn’t got our welcome gift but I resolved to deal with that later.

The Room

The room was reasonably spacious and contained a king size bed, large armchair, an open wardrobe area so beloved of low to mid-price hotels these days and a long desk with chair which housed tea and coffee making facilities, a hairdryer and a flat screen TV. To the right hand side of this was a wall mounted ironing board and iron. The wardrobe area housed several hangers and also a fan was in situ here for hotter days, which sadly we didn’t experience. There was enough space here to store our cabin sized suitcases neatly.

My daughter is at the age now where she complains about having to share a bed with me in a hotel but I am happy to report this bed was big enough to ensure we didn’t bother one another. The mattress was fairly firm which I had no issue with but my daughter disliked.

When I booked the hotel the website claimed there was free wifi available but I later discovered this is only available in the lobby and in the bar. This is worth noting if you need to have wifi in your room as the Mercure website isn’t particularly clear on the matter – I actually think it’s a bit misleading.

The bathroom was pleasant – it had a large mirror above the wash hand basin and vanity area with plenty of space for our toiletries, lotions and potions. The shower was above the bath and I was relieved to see a handle to help me get in and out as the bath was quite high up. There is a shower curtain around the bath but I found this not the best at stopping water hitting the floor. A good range of toiletries are provided in your room including a two in one shampoo and conditioner, shower gel, shower cap and soap.

The only problem I found in the bathroom was the cold tap…it just delivered a trickle of water no matter how far you turned it. Clearly this was a pressure issue to the cold water tank as the hot tap delivered water just fine and the shower was equally as good pressure wise.

The towels, which were changed daily were thick and fluffy and I was pleased to see we had full sized bath sheets to dry ourselves with as opposed to the tiny little bath towels you get in the likes of a Travelodge.

Dining

The hotel has a formal restaurant and a bar and you can eat at both. In addition to this you take breakfast in the ballroom every morning which sounds impressive but due to a complete absence of any windows is a bit dull.

Breakfast is a buffet affair and I have to say I appreciated how eggs and bacon were cooked to varying degrees as opposed to the usual “just done” I tend to encounter in buffets. As a fan of a hard egg yolk and crispy bacon this made things more bearable for me. There’s a fairly good selection of items including black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, sausages and baked beans but my daughter bemoaned the lack of hash browns and I have to say I agreed with her. We liked the bacon, sausages, mushrooms and eggs but the baked beans weren’t so nice with my Heinz loving daughter declaring them to be “rank”.

Toast, pastries, cereals, juices and lots of fresh fruit is also on offer and overall we enjoyed our breakfast every morning.

We had dinner at the hotel twice, which in hindsight was probably rather daft but on both occasions we were tired and just wanted to stay close to our room and dine at the bar. The food itself was decent – I had fish and chips for instance with fish which had clearly been in a freezer for a while. My daughter had lasagne which she patently disliked. It’s not particularly cheap here – main meals cost in the region of £12 to £15 so we were a little disappointed.

We did spend a lot of time in the bar area and spied other guests ordering food which looked far better than what we had got the first night so we persevered on our last night and got pizza which I have to say was much better and worth the money.

We liked the bar area because it had wifi but more importantly for me anyway they had a big screen TV showing the athletics action at the Olympics so I was happy to spend a couple of hours there watching it while my daughter kept up with her pals via Twitter. We only purchased soft drinks but didn’t find them particularly expensive which surprised me in light of the cost of meals at the hotel. A large glass of Diet Pepsi was £2 for instance. The bar also offers seafront views which we liked due to the lack of a view in our room.

Overall Thoughts

I quite liked this hotel but have to say I didn’t love it. The staff were, by and large, incredibly friendly and helpful. I was, however, a little irked to not get the welcome gift when I enquired at reception about an hour after checking in. I can’t imagine it can be difficult to have a note on the computer stating what package I had booked and having the welcome gift ready for me on arrival.

As it was I finally received it around 5.00 pm that afternoon, after asking twice about it, which doesn’t exactly make it a “welcome” gift. The gift itself was a bit of a disappointment with some sweets, two vouchers for a glass of Pimms in the bar (valid only until 9.00pm that night) and some leaflets extolling the virtues of Brighton and a map being the sum total of the gift. I didn’t expect much but giving us vouchers for Pimms when one of the guests was patently under 18 was a bit of a waste and we would have preferred two soft drinks in all honesty.

What irked me more than the contents of the gift was the fact it wasn’t there on arrival and I had to ask for it several times. Basically, the “welcome” aspect was sorely lacking.

The room itself was very nice but there was no view. I must admit at the price I paid I wasn’t expecting a view but the room overlooked a small courtyard which really cut out the amount of light you got in the room. The TV didn’t offer much in the way of channels either but worse the picture wasn’t very good either. I wish more hotels would take a leaf out of Premier Inn’s book and just provide Freeview in every room with all the Freeview channels included. I know we hadn’t gone on holiday to watch TV but I really had to watch the Olympics in the bar to get a decent picture.

Maid service was excellent at the Mercure with our room always done to a high standard. If I opened a small tube of shower gel one day for instance it would be replaced the next with a new one, even if there was still plenty left in the opened one. The maids also always ensured there was plenty of toilet paper supplied which I appreciate as some hotels seem happy to let you run out!

My biggest disappointment with the hotel isn’t something that is the hotel’s fault however. The location just wasn’t really right for me. I prefer to be closer to the centre of Brighton and closer to the Palace Pier in particular – as my daughter loves it there – and I misjudged just how far many of the attractions, in particular the Pavilion, are from the Mercure hotel. Certainly you can’t really walk here from the station except if you have a good half hour to spare and not a lot of luggage.

Parking is also incredibly limited at the hotel – as it is in Brighton as a whole – and is also expensive. I certainly wouldn’t bring my car here because even at £15 per day you can’t be guaranteed a space.

The traffic outside the hotel is also very heavy especially at rush hour and worth bearing in mind if you have children – always use the pedestrian crossing points as there were plenty of boy racers about when we were there.

Overall I don’t think I would be in a rush to return to this hotel on any future trips to Brighton – the location is probably what I disliked the most but little niggles let it down too, including what I viewed to be a poor “welcome” in light of the package I had booked. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised we should also have had bathrobes and slippers in our room – which it goes without saying we didn’t have.

It’s a shame because the hotel does have a lot going for it in terms of room comfort and the friendliness of the staff but it’s oft said that first impressions count when you stay at a hotel and if a hotel can’t remember to welcome you with a promised welcome gift, it does sadly give a poor first impression.