Mercure Santa Marta Emile

Mercure is half apartment half hotel that’s within a close walking distance to the Bello Horizonte beach in Santa Marta. The hotel has more luxury than most hotels in Santa Marta and you will not be disappointed with what the hotel provides. The staff overall were courteous, the food and drinks were good, and the area is much quieter than Rodadero. Unfortunately, there were issues. When you pay for the most expensive room in the hotel you expect things to be as seen in the pictures. The room does not provide the view as shown in hotels.com (with no obstructions, full ocean view). Management needs to understand that if a guest pays premium pricing for a room, they will expect a high level of response/ customer service. Management does not appear to even be on the property and did not approach me about the issue in my room after alerting staff. I expected more from management when a serious issues arises. Lastly are the details. If I cant choose what seat I want at the beach because the employee forces you to sit where he wants you to sit, that’s a problem. If your room had a musty smell of humidity and foul smelling mops the night before, you clean it the day after, and I walk into the room later that day, and it smells worse, that’s a big problem. If your concierge gives you attitude when you complain about that smell after it was cleaned and tells you “then why didn’t you say anything the night before and wait until now,” that’s a major problem.

Nice hotel but do not go to the beach if you don't like to be harassed by vendors every minute Not many things to do around the hotel than the beach There is a little mall quite nice not too far

The hotel was great but we had issues with WiFi the whole time which was very frustrating as we needed to do some work and this prevented us from doing so. When we called to tell them they said that their WiFi is just bad, if you don’t need WiFi then the hotel will be fine. Also, our tv didn’t work so when we were trying to wind down and relax we couldn’t watch tv or Netflix so this ruined the hotel experience. We called to ask them to fix this but it was at night and they said it would take 15 minutes for someone to come. Also we got ripped off by the taxi drivers a lot because they think we’re Europeans who have lots of money, the hotel could try and be more proactive with this as we had to keep walking down to the main road to pay a lot less.

Some employees were well trained and polite, others were either not trained or really didn't care about their job. Spa was poor.

Important to review why hotel was trying to share more for the 4 guests (2 adults, 2 children 11 and 14 years old) than it was proposed on Hotels website. In the end I payed what was initially the deal made through Hotels.com.