You've been upgraded to the Mercure
 

This was a first for me. I have a cheap overnight reservation at Ibis Styles Part Dieu coming up. They called me to say I've been upgraded to the Mercure. The Ibis Styles appears to be open and taking reservations so I don't think this is a COVID thing. Weird, but I'll take it.

I would have thought that ending up in the Mercure, any Mercure, was a downgrade, nothing else. I have yet to have a decent stay in a Mercure, although I am told that there is a family run one in Zurich that is really good.

I tell a lie, I did have one good stay in a Mercure last year, in Bridgewater, England. It's located on the main A38 through town and is new (that helps) and pretty decent.

Will you be losing your breakfast benefit that is included at Ibis Style, or is Mercure going to comp you breakfast, which is not normally included?

there have been reports on this forum where hotels that are "open" and selling rooms on the website are actually closed and just bumping all of their reservations to a nearby hotel.

My experiences are similar - newly opened Mercures are certainly not bad. I have stayed in numerous newly opened Mercures and enjoyed them all. Older Mercures are definitely nothing to write home about.

My impression of Mercure is that they're the catch-all/non-conforming brand for a property that's in a good location but doesn't really fit into one of the other Accor brand standards criteria . Kind of like what Hilton does with Doubletree but without the cookies, so it really can fall anywhere on the spectrum from lovely to terrible.

Mercure is certainly less predictible than Ibis Styles; the Mercure brand has hotels from very good to pretty lousy...

do you mean the Mercure Stoller Zurich? this was for long time a family owned hotel and has quite reasonable prices for Zurich

How do the locations compare for your purposes?

The Ibis Styles and the Mercure are in the same building (same owner). They are both quite new hotels. This Mercure is one of the best Mercure in France

Same thing happened to me when I booked the Ibis Brussels Off Grand Place. I got upgraded to the Novotel.

Seems to be very common.

Likewise. Had an overnight booked at the Ibis Blackfriars in London, got moved to the Novotel in the other half of the building as the Ibis bit had been closed.

Front Desk comp'ed in breakfast at the Novotel, even though breakfast hadn't been included in my Ibis rate, but I had a breakfast meeting scheduled elsewhere so I couldn't use it

Where properties are co-located or very close by it probably makes sense right now to consolidate the limited number of bookings at the one location to reduce expenses

Yes this is the case. I think the rate at the Mercure is about 25 euros higher than the Ibis Styles. I didn't ask about breakfast. I'll find out this weekend.

As for Mercure, it's true that there are some bad ones in France, but I've found that in other countries they can be great. Even if they are 700 years old like this Mercure in England that I really enjoyed.

https://all.accor.com/hotel/6617/index.en.shtml

Yes, the Mercure Stoller Zurich, very good apparently. I meant to edit my post and add that but forgot.

I've found most offending Mercures to be in England and have mostly avoided them in France.

During a trip to London last year I stayed at the Mercure Hyde Park and the Waldorf Hilton. The Mercure is one of the best hotels I have ever stayed at. I wont be going back to the Waldorf.

CT