Mercure Paris La Defense 5 - Courbevoie, France     

I stayed at Mercure in Courbevoie during the middle of March. Its a nice hotel but if you stay there get a rooms that points toward the surroundings and not in the middle (The hotel in a round shape like a donut). When I arrived at the hotel it was well fashioned and people spoke English (good thing because all I knew was oui). Through my company I got a cheaper rate of about 130 Euros a night which I thought was expensive, but you are in France, everything is expensive. Once I got to my room I was alittle taken back due to the size. Here in America everything is bigger and biggest, there is smaller and smallest. As I unpacked and all I went into the bathroom and noticed no shower door. It was the worst idea of the architect not to put one in. WATER GOES EVERYWHERE!!! The bed was comfortable and the TV actually had American movies to watch (for an extra 15 euro a day, but I didnt care because my company was paying) I never ate at the hotel, but I did get a coffee and a bottle of water and the bill came to 10 euro. That is very expensive! All in all, its a nice hotel and close to La Defense where my Paris office is (La Grande Arche) If you are a family I would choose another place but for business travelers it is quite good. They also provide free shuttle service to the train station in La Defense which I used due to being a typical "lazy american"

Husband and I stayed here as part of a Trafalgar tour in sept 2007. The hotel room wasn't bad, was clean and had been refurbished. The biggest drawback to this hotel for tourists is the location, so I don't recommend it. Also we had a weird incident occur during our stay, see below. The location simply isn't good for tourists. If it were closer to the metro I might not say that, but we took a shuttle bus to/from the hotel to the metro. The shuttle schedule isn't too bad and we didn't have to wait very long either at the metro or at the hotel, maybe 15-20 minutes at most late at night, but still I would prefer not to be tied into a shuttle schedule. buffet breakfast was one of the not-as-good ones, though we got there late. some eggs and indiv containers of yogurt and croissants/pastries and cornflakes for cereal. I ended up just eating croissants and pastries only for breakfast as nothing else looked good to me. The yogurt was probably ok but I like thick yogurt and it was the thin runny variety. room was clean. bathroom looks very new and clean but shower had no curtain. this was the 3rd hotel on our tour which had no shower curtain, so by this time I had figured out how to shower w/o getting the floor sopping wet. One day during our stay, a man without any uniform or ID opened our room with a cardkey. He saw me and said he was here to change a light bulb that he was called about and showed us the new light bulb (this was in french). It was either late am or midday (we were very late starters) and I think maybe he expected we would be out. I said in french, I want to see your ID. He did not show it to me. I said, all the light bulbs are working, we didn't call for you. He kept insisting but I did not let him into the room past the door since we hadn't called for maintenance AND all the lights in the room were working fine. Finally he left. Afterwards I called reception about this in french, thinking he was a thief or something. They laughed and confirmed his story, said that he was maintenance and was trying to change a light bulb. I thought the whole affair was very suspicious given that all the light bulbs in the room and bathroom were all working and we never called reception to complain about them. Anyway we always carried our passports and valuables on us and when we did leave the hotel room, my husband locked our suitcases together with a steel cable lock he brought and chained them to as much furniture as he could. We did not have anything stolen, but I wonder. Pro: this hotel had self-serve laundry machines and iron. dryer however didn't work that well. clothes didn't dry after paid for 2 cycles so we finally gave up on dryer, strung clothesline/twine across the tub and across the room to hang dry the laundry. Once you get on the metro from La Defense metro stop, it is a quick ride to the major tourist attractions. We did not purchase the Trafalagar paris optionals because I can speak some french (not fluent, but functional, it got us around for 4 days), so we had to figure out the metro etc by ourselves. The La Defense metro station is large and can be confusing for first-timers, another reason I don't recommend this hotel for tourists. If it is your first time and you cannot speak any french, good luck to you, I think my husband who speaks no french would have been stuck, and this is a guy from NYC who is used to commuting taking the NYC subway and switching lines etc. We kept trying to put our metro tickets in the entrance gates to the RER lines because they were not clearly marked that it was for RER, not metro. Eventually I found the information desk and cleared that error up, but only after we lost about 20-30 minutes. Also if you want to buy tickets at La Defense metro station, you better be able to speak french. We tried the automated machines, could not figure out how to work them, and finally gave up to seek a person to buy tickets from. There was one very long line/queue of impatient commuters at the only open ticket window (this also occurred at other metro stations). The poor man in front of me who could only speak english was holding up the whole line asking to buy RER tickets and the clerk answered him twice in french that he had to go to the other booth to buy them, she only sold metro tickets. When I realized he couldn't understand I translated for him. Due to location and that weird incident, I do not recommend this hotel.