Mercure Simson Beach Saint-Martin

Our stay: January 6 - 13 , 2007. It turned out to be miserable.

1. DIRTY:
Not only did the room look worn out and tired, it was actually dirty. It was very dusty, the shower was mouldy, the night table switches were grimy...

2. NOISY:
Half the rooms face the main road of the island. We were allocated a room facing the street. The cars, trucks & motorcycles zooming by as late as midnight were very noisy.

3. SERVICE:
Our plane arrived in the evening. By the time we finished our check in, it was already after 10:30 pm. The fridge in the room was empty. There was no water kettle in the room & we didn't want to drink the tap water. You can only get drinks & water (included in our all-inclusive package) from the bar which closed at 10:30 pm. My husband was so thirsty that he went to the front desk to see if he could get any drinks or water. He was told that we could buy drinks from the vending machines in the hotel, so he gladly went to look for the machines, but found that they only took euro coins. We only had Canadian and US coins with us, so he asked the night manager if there's any way we could use our US dollars at the hotel and get a drink. The night manager condescendingly told my husband that we could not use US dollars & we should realize we are now in Europe. So we couldn't get any Euro change nor could we get any drinking water, and had to spend the night thirsty. It was one of the longest nights we had in our lives.

The restaurant service was slow and inefficient. The waiter served everybody around us who came later than us. We were not sure if it was because we spoke English, so we tried to use our broken French, but it did not work.

4. FOOD:
The old reviews we read on the internet were very good for the food. But then the hotel is still advertising a chef named Philippe Le Bigot who's no longer working there . No wonder the food we had was under par. The food was mostly bland , sometimes undercooked & the ingredients not fresh. There were usually no vegetables with the dinner.

car rental at hotel is convenient

dirty, noisy, unfriendly, inefficient, bad food