Hotel: Mercure Budapest Metropol
Address: 58 Rakoczi, Budapest,1074, Hungary Telephone: 00 36 (0) 1 462 8100

The hotel Budapest Metropol certainly fitted the above criteria and we booked the rooms through www.superbreak.com as they were offering four nights for the price of three on a bed & breakfast basis. We also requested non smoking rooms and quiet rooms and these were acknowledged but could not be guaranteed (although we did all get quiet, non-smoking rooms). In total I paid £196.87 for my room and the doubles were £223.88 per room. Without this offer the best deals were on a room only basis with www.accorhotels.com. Some of our party elected to stay at the Intercontinental with was £70 on a room only basis. Mecure is a chain that is part of the Accor group, which also includes chain hotels such as Ibis and Novatel.

The hotel originally opened in 1896, the same time as the Metro system opened in the city. The general décor is modern and is saved from being a bland chain style by utilising the Metro theme with the lift doors cleverly painted to resemble old style train doors. Different station names (with historical details) are given on each floor. It is a nice theme, which managed not to cross the line into tacky. The reception and communal areas are all spacious, but I am not aware of any ground floor rooms, so wheelchair users would need to use the lift to access their rooms (which could be an issue in the event of fire). The Reception desk in manned 24 hours and you can use the safety deposit boxes in the back office (there is none in your rooms). There was a small gift shop in reception as well. There is a small seating area here, it is a smoking section, but as the whole area is quite large and airy, it is unlikely to offend unless you are sitting close to the smoker.

I found the reception, restaurant and cleaning staff to all be helpful and friendly, with the exception of one incident with a reception member (who had previously checked us in so efficiently). There were six of us waiting in the lobby to go out and eat, and a huge queue at the desk, as we left to go out I noticed the queue had disappeared and popped over to ask if he knew the New Year's Eve closing times. He answered my question politely, and as I went to move away another friend went to ask something. The man then made a huge show of putting the money he was about to count away in his drawer, and slamming it shut before he would acknowledge my friend. My friend then said 'oh don't worry about it' and walked away. It was completely out of character with the service any of us received at any other time in the hotel however. We had pre-paid, but the hotel accepts all major credit cards or you can settle in cash - Hungarian Forint or Euro is you prefer.

The hotel offers three meeting rooms for corporate clients. There is a 'business centre' and the hotel also has Wi-fi but there were not notices of the price. The hotel does not offer a swimming pool or fitness suite (Budapest has plenty of natural thermal pools). I did not see any children in the hotel during my four night stay, although the Accor website says that there is a babysitting service available. There are no other obvious child friendly facilities.