Mercure Paris Bercy - Paris, France     

I have stayed at this hotel several times while attending an annual event at the Palais D'Omnisports Paris Bercy. Location for that is fantastic, a little bit out of the way for the main sights of Paris though. Its very close to Gare De Lyon and is also served by metro line 14 (And another one I cant remember) - Bercy is a nice area where I generally feel safe at night. Lots of nice restaurants are just across the street from the hotel. The hotel itself was booked via www.accorhotels.com - Its basic but clean and modern and has now changed from being a Mercure Hotel. The reception staff were very helpful and polite and I can still see me visiting this hotel every November for many years to come. Prices are very reasonable too!

My company has an office nearby, and I have stayed at this hotel when it used to be the Mercure. Now it has been renovated and rebranded to All Seasons, and this has made it truly awful for the business traveller. Firstly, the already small rooms no longer have any desk for working, just a rolling tray that can be positioned over the bed. The bathroom has no space to put your own toiletries due to a bizarrely large sink. The air conditioning units have not been renewed, so are the same small, noisy units that worked so badly before in the Mercure. Whilst the room now has bright colours, the single most annoying item is the new bed. Due to the design (slats over wooden boxes with mattress on top) the bed undersheet doesn't stay fixed, so as soon as you get into the bed, you find that the bottom sheet creases and gathers around you, and can't be fixed (I ended up removing mine). The uncomfortable mattresses from the Mercure still seem to be here though. The in-room TV is a philips LCD widescreen which would be great, apart from being fixed on the wall at the end of the bed at the wrong height. This means that whilst sitting on the bed (the only place to sit as there are no other seats in the room), your view is too low, and the LCD isn't properly visible (half the screen has a black tinge). Finally, the all-inclusive wifi turns out to be only in the public areas, and there is no wifi coverage in the bedrooms (and no other modem/ethernet connections either). This probably explains why at 3:50 in the morning, I'm unable to sleep in this room and have used the 3G card on my laptop to write this review. If I can save at least one other traveller from the sleepless night experience, it will be worthwhile.