Description: We found a reasonable deal for £142 for two nights at the Mercure Kapuzinerberg, billed as a four star hotel and situated about ten minutes walk from the Mirabelle Gardens and Linzer Gasse, with another five minutes strolling time to the main touristic area.
Most visitors would take a taxi to the hotel from the train station or the airport (visitors to Salzburg seem to be rather well heeled for the most part) but it should only have been a ten minute walk at most from the train station and so we set off on foot.
There are two Mercure hotels in this area; the Kapuzinerberg, so-called because it stands just under the Kapuzinerberg, is situated on a fairly busy main road, though in the evenings and during the night there was minimal traffic. The hotel is housed in a modern building that has little kerb appeal and not much in the way of an welcoming entrance. It's only slightly set back from the pavement and has a narrow forecourt between the doors and the pavement.
The ground floor space contains the reception area, a small bar and lots of funky white seating, much of it rather low level. The restaurant/breakfast room is just off the main foyer, with a view of the road in front of the hotel. It's funny that the cleverly taken publicity shots of the hotel give the impression that the hotel enjoys some leafy location and while rooms at the rear do kind of look out onto the Kapuzinerberg, if you look down you'll see the horrible back "garden" of the hotel which looks terrible.
Our initial contact with the staff was positive. It was only later, when a couple of issues arose, that we found that the staff weren't hugely proactive or helpful.
Our room was on the first floor at the end of the corridor furtherest from the lift which suited me as it means that nobody has to walk past your room. On the way we noticed lots of lighter patches on the carpet that looked a bit like bleach had been spilt; there were also lots of marks on the walls. The light outside our room flickered incesantly and as ours was the only room that had a fanlight above the door I did think that we'd be kept awake at night but what we found on the other side persuaded me that this would not be the case. Immediately inside there was first a large room, empty but for a wardrobe and a place to stand luggage. The main part of the room was beyond this.
The room seemed dark partly due to the fact that the room was at the rear of the building and so the mountain did block out a lot of the light on a gloriously sunny day. There's no denying, though, that the room was fairly gloomy anyway. Whether from the one now perched on a tiny table or some other television set, there was a horrible grimy line on the wall and other marks from bumps and bashes on all of the walls. As there was no air conditioning there was a free standing electric fan placed in an rather silly place right in front of the window.
The bathroom was disappointing. It was clean and it wasn't small but the tiles should be regrouted and one of the ceiling tiles had not been properly replaced so the shower curtain rail touched tte curtain and could not be pulled along. There was a shower over the bath which worked perfectly well but both of us felt that the side of the bath was quite high.
There were four pillows on the bed, two synthetic and two feather-filled. As the pillows were quite plump we discarded the ones with feathers (which I am allergic to and Himself just doesn't like) and made do with the synthetic ones.
After a quick wash we went out to see the sights of Salzburg and returned around ten p.m. I wanted to check some things for the following two days and having changed into night attire, I fired up the netbook only to find that I could not connect to the hotel's wi-fi. A leaflet gave instructions but I still could not connect. I picked up the telephone to contact reception but there were no numbers by the phone, nor in the infomation folder. I guessed at zero but this was not right so Himself re-dressed and went to enquire at reception.
"Oh yes" he was told "your room is on the corner of the hotel where there is no connection. But you can come and use the connection in the foyer if you like". Actually we didn't like. The seating in the foyer really wasn't comfortable looking and it would be a real pain to try to use the netbook there. The receptionist suggested using our computer in the outer room but this was not really practical either as there was no desk in there. The only way you could use it would be to lie on the floor or to kneel on the floor with the netbook on the suitcase shelf. A request for an alternative room was refused on the grounds that all the rooms were full that night but that we could be moved the following day.
The next morning we packed our bags and went to reception to request our room change. Although a room would not be ready till later, we left our bags with the receptionist and we told when the room would be ready. We explained that we would not come back until much later as we didn't wish to trail back to the hotel in the middle of the day.
On our return we were issued with new swipecards and advised that our luggage was in the new room. This room was almost directly opposite the lift which was disappointing but we resolved to be happy with the room change. This time there was no big "ante room" and the sleeping area seemed to be smaller but the room was certainly better presented. Then we realised that our luggage was not there; this news surprised the receptionist we called down to but ten minutes later there was a knock at the door and we were reunited with our bags.
In this room there were only two pillows and no spares stashed away. Of course, both contained feathers and so too did the quilts. I started to make my way to reception but found on of the reception staff in the corridor just outside our room and she said she would ask the housekeeper to find snythetic quilts and pillows. Half an hour later we were ready to go out for the evening and as we had heard nothing about the bedding I asked again. The young woman I'd spoken too looked a little sheepish and told me that they couldn't do anything as I had not told them in advance of my stay. I pointed out that the hotel did have these items as I'd had them the night before and asked very politely for her to do her best to find those items for me before we came back in a few hours time. She didn't look confident but we had what we'd requested when we got back.
Quite how this how this hotel gets its four star status is beyond me; perhaps I'd have been more inclined to believe it had it not been quite so down at heel. There were several threadbare patches on carpet on the stairs (two of which could have been dangerous) and since most customers were using the lift it seems odd that the stair carpet should be so damaged.
The reception staff were young and I feel they'd have benefitted from the inclusion of someone more mature in their team who would have been better able to deal with complaints. I got the impression that the staff would prefer to just hope the issue would go away than to find a solution to any problems they were presented with.
We didn't eat breakfast at the hotel; at €15 each it was just too expensive and there were plenty of bakeries nearby to grab something. Surprisingly for a hotel room in this part of the world, the room contained facilities for making hot drinks although there appeared to be a strong preference for coffee over tea.
I initially thought of awarding this hotel three stars of a possible five because some of the probelms we experienced are quite minor; however, the fact that these minor issues appear to have been ignored when they could easily be tackled is what is so annoying about the place. It's shame because the location is good and you can get prices that would be very fair if some of those issues were resolved.
(The hotel has some private parking for guests arriving by car).
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