My stay here was horrendous! The aircon was not working, the receptionists were rude and ignorant. The Hotel has a Best Price Guarantee but you can't rely on the price being related to the Receptionists. The decor of the rooms left a lot to be desired and it certainly isn't a 4* hotel. However as the review title suggests, had it not been for Karl who saved us from our stifling room and who treated us as guests I can safely say I would never go back there again.

Just back from a 4 night stay at the Mercure Notre Dame. We travelled with our 2 children, aged 7 & 9. The hotel gave us a 'junior suite', which gave us plenty of room. Nice spacious bathroom with separate toilet, lots of complimentary toiletries etc, large wardrobes. The hotel was very clean, and very quiet at night. We had a lovely balcony with patio set, and electric shutters that you could close at night, so the room was nice and dark. The breakfast was a large buffet, with everything you would want. The pool on the roof is quite small, but the children loved it. The great thing about it is the location - literally in the middle of all the shopping, very convenient to the train station/taxis. About 15 minutes walk to the beach. The staff were very nice, and all spoke perfect English. It was very hot of course, but the air conditioning was a blessing.

This was my 3rd visit to Nice, and I would stay here again.

Booked this hotel for a girls weekend away from our kids and high on the agenda was a central hotel, close to shops, the beach, restaurants and with a pool. The hotel is right in the middle of shopping heaven. Ten minutes walk to the beach and ten minutes walk to the "old town" where all the lovely restaurants and the famous "flower market" is. I weighed up booking a hotel on the sea front with a sea view. But in the end was glad of the quiet location of this hotel. The hotels on the seafront would be noisy as a main road is inbetween you and the sea.

The beds in the room were very comfortable, there was a safe in your room for all your valuables, an iron and an ironing board and most importabtly, they did breakfast till eleven and twelve at the weekend!

The breakfast room was lovely, light and airy and not tucked away in basement like some hotel restaurants. There was loads of choice and you could stuff yourselves silly each day if you want to save some money on lunches.

The hotel pool is bigger than the picture on the web site suggests which is unusual and the view and the ambience is lovely.

I was ill whilst I was there and the hotel called me a doctor who came to my room and spoke great english.

On departure day (12 noon) you can leave your bags at reception so you don't have to lug them around Nice.

The hotel is really easy to get to, get a number 99 bus from the airport for 4 Euros to the train station. The bus takes 15 minutes to get to the station and only stops twice so you know you are there when everybody gets off. It is then a ten minute walk from the train station to the hotel.

When I booked the hotel, shop around because I started with a three nights stay on [--]for £370.00 for two people not including breakfast (at £15.00 per person) and ended up with three nights accommodation including breakfast for £300.00 through tripadvisor.com web search facility on hotels.

Booked this hotel via travel agent after checking out the reviews on this site. I have to say we spent 5 nights here and it was a fantastic hotel. I'm not sure what the issues people have had with air con have been (it seems to be a commented upon issue) however ours worked fantastically and was unnoticeable noise wise. The hotel staff were very accomodating and many services such as porter, room service and inter hotel phone calls came at no extra charge. The staff offered free drinks due to our room not being ready on arrival (they needed half an hour due to check out and check in being at midday) we recieved welcome gifts in our room and the room itself was very spacious and clean. The bed was EXTREMELY comfortable to sleep in (if it could have fitted into the suitcase I would have had it!) and the bathroom included a bath with shower, toilet, sink, bidet, hairdryer (though I would probably recommend your own travel version as I had) - all again VERY clean.
The rooftop terrace was amazing - and the pool was excellent on the roof and surprisingly was never busy as the French guests tended to dip in for one length and back out again.
Breakfast came in 3 forms - room service (coissants, fresh fruit, yoghurts, drinks), the same coissants and rolls etc in a bag to go or a buffet including many different breakfasts from cereals, coissants to cooked with bacon sausages scrambled egg and toast (not a full English but good all the same).
A general warning to those staying in Nice is to be aware of drink prices. Coke was E3.50 for a 330ml bottle - however - there is a Spar just across the road and a BRILLIANT supermarket called MONOPRIX just down the road. You can buy six cans or bottles of water etc for the price of one bar drink and simply fill your room mini bar with them - hence saving yourself some money for other things!
The hotel food is good - the pizza, croque monsieur and the choc cake with ice cream come recommended by myself!

Some final tips -
Use the bar to get your towels for swimming - they are a free service and mean you don't need beach towels unless you are going to the beach yourselves

The safe in reception is secure - we left passports and money to ensure if anything did get lifted outside we were not up the creek without a paddle

Take the 99 bus from the airport direct to the train station, it costs 4 euros each and is only round the corner from the hotel

If your flight leaves at night the hotel are happy to hold cases throughout your last day after checkout for you to collect later (to save you dragging them about). Late checkout is also possible but only providing your room isn't booked out and it may cost you extra.

Ask the reception to post any postcards for you!! They charged 1 euro per card, I asked due to not being able to find somewhere selling stamps, not knowing the postage anyway and the 'la poste' being closed (after a 3/4 hour search for it). The postcards got to England 2 days later, the postage says it cost the hotel 60 cents to send one card so I reckon that the 40 cents (approx 25p) is well worth paying them per card to save you the hassle of finding everything.

Anybody using guide books as gospel should be aware that the tramway due to be finished by June 2007 is most certainly nowhere near being finished from what we could see, the main street came as a bit of a shock when we rounded the corner as it was being dug up still in many places. HOWEVER - we were in the hotel and slept in many mornings after work had begun and it didn't affect us noise wise (perhaps if we had open windows but what use is aircon with open windows?) It didn't disrupt us up on the roof either.

Over all this hotel offered great value for the services it offered.
Be sure to look out for it on the Cresta site where we stumbled across it as we got a 5 nights for 4 deal and another couple we met got 4 nights for 3 - just be sure to establish that you want a double room (and non smoking if you're non smokers yourselves as smoking is permitted in some rooms) otherwise you may get a twin as the other couple did.