Mercure Hevelius

Gdansk"s skyscraper hotel

Great view from 9th floor [ half way up ].The room is just what you expect from 450 zloty single. The top floors cost even more. Celebrities have stayed here .

Unique Quality: Looking down from 9th floor you can see a little white house, this is an old pub with beer garden.

• Opinion of Price: more expensive than average

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Good Location

Stayed here for one night in 1991, shortly after the fall of the old regime. They were working hard to put their old ways behind and were fairly successful in providing good service.

I was part of a guided tour thru Western Poland and spent the night meeting with some business people that owed my company a large quantity of money. So they were nice hosts for dinner and then drinks in the night club located in the hotel basement afterwards.

What I didn't realize until my hosts had left and I was heading back to my room (where my elderly father was snoozing) was that the ladies who had kept stopping by our table all night expected to be paid for their time. Nothing happened as far as I knew that required compensating but two of them and the bar tender followed me onto the elevator loudly proclaiming I owed a vast amount of funds for the evening. Rather than wake dad up - I paid them off. $200USD. Never did figure out how to get reimbursed for that fiasco! But our Polish customer did pay us shortly after my visit so it wasn't all for naught.

I don't know what the room charges were since we were part of a tour and it was 15 years ago anyway.

Our room was small but with a great view of the Gdansk shipyards where it all began.

Food was good and plentiful at diiner in the hotel's dining room. Breakfast buffet was memorable in how bad it was. All I wanted was an egg!

Not my favourite hotel but...

I can recommend you to stay in this hotel exclusively in case of no vacancy in Hostel przy Targu Rybnym and Gotyk Hostel or if you travel with a pet unless your budget can afford additinal some 20 euros and you accept to spend it for a room for two per night in a 5-star Dwor Oliwski hotel.

Generally I don't like large hotels built and opened before, say, 1990 in Poland and other countries which had belonged to the Soviet bloc. They were built and run following typical for those times and their location on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, poor quality. Although they had been renovated and they had released their lazy (sometimes rude and corruptive) staff (otherwise they would go bankrupt in times of the market economy), I am always afraid that somewhat didn't still changed in these hotels or minds of their staff.

I didn't stay in Mercure Hevelius Hotel due to no vacancy but I called them and surprisingly they tried to help me (unsuccessfully though) to find other accommodaion. Anyway, it was a nice surprise. I'd probably hear short "what do you want?", "no vacancy", "I don't know" and "do what you want", "sorry, I don't have more time for you" etc. in the same hotel, say, 15 years ago. Or being a foreign visitor from "the West" I would be forced to pay a few US dollars bribe for "finding out" a room for me. Well, the 3-star hotel is a member of international hotel chain (run by a French company) called Mercure Accor Hotels now.

Unique Quality: ADVANTAGES
1. Views from a room window.
It's the highest building in the area. Try to book/take a room on a higher floor with a view towards the south (old town).

2. Location (at daytime)
Just a few minutes on foot from the most touristy and interesting part of the old town.

3. Guarded parking lot (outdoor though).

4. Their webpage in English, German and French.
Although you have to start reservation procedures to see up-to-date price for your room. Warning: the real price at place may be... lower or higher.

5. Pets allowed.

6. Restaurant.
The hotel restaurant "U Heweliusza" offers great Polish food at both reasonable and higher price. Try Polish duck with apples, roasted in honey (Kaczka z jablkami zapiekana w miodzie; 45 zl)

DISADVANTAGES
1. Price
If you mix well-known Polish and unfamous French bureaucracy (isn't it a French word?) in any business you have to get either bankruptcy or high prices for consumers, right? I think that 360 zl (90 euros, add a parking fee) they wanted from me for a room for 2 is far too much as for a 3-star hotel in Poland. There are better 3-star hotels for 200 - 250 zl in other Polish very touristy cities. The hotel should lower the prices (and own costs or profits) as soon as new hotels will be completed nearby. Otherwise it may go bancrupt. I can't wait :-)

2. Location (at night-time)
I had to take a walk along poorly lighted streets to get from the old town to the hotel. Well, Gdansk is not famous for high crime rate in Poland, no worries. But, if I were a foreigner, I might had been afraid to walk there alone in the middle of the night, especially after a few beers.

3. The past
Hmm... I am not sure whether the communist past still influences this hotel (design, quality of service and staff). Anyway, read my doubts in the beginning.

4. Limited internet access
Only in some rooms (and no wireless but by a cable).

4. Ugly exterior
I just don't like such simple, high, cement structures. Well, it looks better at night.

• Opinion of Price: about average
• Related to: Budget Travel, Road Trip, Backpacking

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Easy to find

You cant miss this hotel towering in the sky with its sign at the top.
The rooms are what you expect of such a hotel, clean , not massive , but functional with excellent shower.

Unique Quality: Great selection for breakfast.

• Opinion of Price: more expensive than average

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big and beautiful with amazing views

• Opinion of Price: more expensive than average

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Hotel Hevelius

Double room = 104-122 EURO

Unique Quality: Obviously a hotel belonging to a chain (Mercure Accor), but good and affordable. Although not cheap, not even by western standards. We stayed one night.
Photo taken from the website below.

• Opinion of Price: more expensive than average
• Related to: Business Travel

Mercure Hevelius

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