Hôtel de Bourbon - Mercure Bourges

The hotel impresses with varied breakfast options and modern, well-equipped rooms. Guests appreciate the cleanliness and convenient location near a park and town. The friendly and attentive staff also receive high praise.

May I caveat this review to say that it is only the second ever review I have written and the first was 20 years ago but we were so disappointed we felt compelled to write this. Also to say we stayed here last year and only had very good feedback. What a difference a year makes! We are a family of four and booked a suite - same as last year -when we had a room with two bathrooms and plenty of space. Be warned though, there is only one room like this and if you don’t know to ask then you can get ripped off with a small stuffy room with malfunctioning air conditioning- all for the same price! Onto the “air conditioning” - it was 40 degrees when we arrived and the room had had its air conditioning turned off - apparently the people before us had specifically requested this!? What ensued was farcical, well it would have been if it wasn’t 40 degrees! I visited reception twice to complain and a nice lady tried to help. Sadly though this meant an extremely rude man on reception ringing the room to tell me they had switched it back on and I was wrong and that the air conditioning was working perfectly (shocking customer service) and I was not giving it enough time - this is all while I had sweat pouring down my face. After 2 hours I called again but no helpful response so went back downstairs again and the nice lady on reception had to give me her fan! The room was a bearable temperature (not cold) by the time we left at 8am next morning. On top of all this we had a surly bar man who didn’t want to bring me a fresh glass for a new drink - he proceeded to put the glass out of my reach when it did come. He refused to make my husband a cocktail after 10.30pm starting he was done mixing cocktails for the night but the bar was still open?! My husband and my two sons who were chatting and reading their phones, were also told to keep the noise down, in an empty bar before 11pm. Such terrible customer service so we therefore cancelled our return booking for 2 weeks later and had a lovely time at a hotel who knows how to treat their paying guests. Suffice it to say we will never return. I have never been spoken to in such a way as the gentleman on Reception spoke to me - how can you be adamant the air conditioning is working properly when the room is unbelievably hot and refuse to move our room, stating that the hotel was full - I guess all the other guests knew better than to frequent the bar as we barely saw another person in this “full” hotel.

We don’t expect much from Accor’s Mercure chain of 3/4star hotels and we’re usually right. In Newport they forgot to service our room and the TV in the lounge of our junior suite didn’t work but Mercure Bourges is even worse, The first Privilege room we were shown was so dark we couldn’t seen as it had tiny little windows. The second was far brighter but painfully small. On checking the bed we found a paper mattress cover (yes really); a duvet cover as a bottom sheet as they have obviously run out of normal sheets; thin towels that are wet after one wash and no way to dry them; no face cloths; and a TV so close to the sofa that one person is too close to watch it. It looks good from the outside but if this is the best Bourges/Accor have to offer then it’s pretty poor. Depressing,