Mercure Hotel Palermo Centro

We were woken by the plumbing around 5am every morning, and the road noise was also bad. The room needs soundproofing. Breakfast was basic and repeated daily, which I didn't mind. The advertised hotel was misleading. We arrived and were taken to an office block five minutes away, on an extremely busy road. The block had four rooms owned by the hotel, and noise there was constant. The bathroom was filthy, with black mold in the shower. The shower head was hanging off the wall and caught on the door whenever we opened or closed it, and the shower itself made a loud noise. The handle came off our room door on the first day, and we reported it. When the maid came, she took the sheets off and brought clean ones, but left the dirty sheets on the floor. My shorts also went missing, though I think that was a genuine mistake. This complaint has been raised before in reviews on On the Beach, and I agree with it. The hotel should stop giving the impression that guests have booked the property shown when the room is actually in a different office block on a busy road. Hygiene and maintenance, especially the door handles and shower heads, need attention. I wouldn't recommend it or return.

There was no parking near the hotel, so we paid the reception an extra 25 Euro per night to leave the car in their lot. Our deal included a daily minibar refill, just one beer, two waters, and a Coke, but in five nights we got drinks on only two days, and only after reminding reception. Breakfast was very standard and the same each day. The room was tiny for the size of the hotel, and the busy buffet was stressful. The rooms were noisy, including sounds from outside every night. Don't ask for a balcony room if you expect to sit outside, since they wouldn't provide a chair due to company policy. Showers also seemed to affect the next room's toilet water, and reception called asking us to stop running the water for too long. Please don't use the lift. You might get stuck and wait 20 minutes for someone to fix it. We woke at midnight to hear a guest trapped in it, then we got stuck ourselves the next afternoon. They hadn't warned anyone or put a staff member by the lift, and only kept fixing it when people called. If the Mercure brand is good, this place definitely didn't live up to it.

I booked a Dependence double room on the fifth floor of a building one block from the main hotel. The room was modern and clean, though we could hear the plumbing and the guests next door. Breakfast had plenty of choices and was especially good if you like sweet things.

The Premium rooms are in a separate building about 30m from the hotel. Ours was clean and pleasant, with a balcony you could step out onto. The hotel itself is on a fairly quiet side street near Palermo's old town. The problem came at breakfast. A dog was carried around the buffet very close to the food. That would have been fine if it had stayed quietly under the table, but it didn't. Staff told us the owner had checked with reception and been told dogs were allowed in the restaurant. I have a problem with that.