Mercure St. Julian´s Malta

Lovely few nights at this hotel. Very clean and comfortable room. Construction work going on out the back but had minimal impact on our stay. Special thanks to Maurice and Jesse on reception who were very helpful! Highly recommend as a place to stay in St Julian’s.

Excellent hotel where everything works great from the very kind staff to the nice and comfortable room.

Exceptional team members, well located for the bay, entertainment and bus stops. Combined with the well appointed bedrooms and a good selection of options at breakfast - all these factors have been reflected in the higher rating. We selected one of the best rooms with a balcony, sea view from the 7th floor. This was a great choice although you do need to allow for the lack of door insulation from the outside noise at night from the local establishments, the occasional loud cars, louder party goers and a rubbish truck at 4 am (only once on the later during our 7 night stay). Overall we didn't have any bad nights sleep however the building work started with rumbling from 7 am so a lay in bed was challenging - I understand this will eventually stop (hopefully through the main season). The rumbling was even more distinctive in the lower ground breakfast area that was comparable to being next to a London underground train station. We experienced a small ant problem over two days in the bedroom and this was promptly addressed twice with success on both days - credit to the management/house keeping team in sorting as well as demonstrating high level customer service in following up through the telephone and WhatsApp. Great view from the pool area and the picture reflects the small size of the pool. No evening meals were available until May so we looked at alternatives restaurants/takeaways nearby.

Let me start by saying that this is a clean, well-run hotel with great staff and this review is written without any prejudice towards them. However, there are definitely issues that everyone should be aware of, some of which the hotel could attend to but the main one, whilst being out of their control, they are guilty of hiding from the paying clients until it's too late. In my experience of staying at numerous Mercure hotels, one of the stand out features is their great breakfasts. Unfortunately this wasn't up to their usual standards here, which was disappointing. Only other minor gripes are that the bar area in the foyer is a bit bland and unwelcoming and the rooftop pool is a lot smaller than the published images suggest. Put three people in it and it's crowded! Now we get to the big problem with the hotel... It is quite literally wrapped in building sites which are carrying out deep excavation work, using pneumatic drill attachments in JCB diggers... And they start at 7am, six days per week. Once they have loosened enough rock, a seemingly endless stream of lorries arrive to take it away, so the constant drilling changes to the explosive sound of huge boulders being dropped into lorries for several hours. Then the drilling starts again. The noise is unbelievable and you can't hear yourself think. The breakfast room vibrates with it and it becomes difficult to have a quiet conversation over your coffee and cornflakes. Now, I totally understand that the hotel has no control over this whatsoever and that local building regulations which ban major building work in high season means that these projects are being rushed along at this time of year to get as much done as possible before they have to down tools for 4 months, but having arrived late afternoon when work had finished for the day, the first sign of this was seeing packs of earplugs on the bedside tables. No mention of it at check in, no sign in reception or the lift up to the room... Just packs of earplugs ringing a huge warning bell. We then found the laminated sheet on the dressing table explaining what was going on. We immediately looked out of the window and were horrified at the sight but thought to ourselves that it surely couldn't be that bad. It was. And 24 hours later we were in a different hotel, thanks to British Airways efficiency and excellent customer service. In summary, the hotel isn't to blame for the disaster that's going on around them, but they are guilty of hiding it from unsuspecting customers and whilst we managed to resolve it by moving, it wasted a day of our short holiday arranging it and then packing up and relocating. Our recommendation: good hotel but avoid it until the building work has been completed.

I would not recommend staying here to anyone. There’s a massive building site next door which they dismiss as “nothing we can do about” - they pretend to not even know when the noise will be despite there being limits of when loud construction work takes place, yet still decide not to share that information with guests just so nobody asks questions. What’s worse is that the aircon system doesn’t work - they claimed it was “winter mode” which is self inflicted. You’d think given the building site next door and therefore reluctance for people to sleep with windows open that they’d maybe treat it as summer sooner so at least you can use the aircon and keep some of the noise out. We asked to change rooms but they claimed to be fully booked - if you have significant building work being done outside, maybe don’t book out the rooms on lower floors that face directly onto it. It’s pure corporate greed with the hope people won’t complain - well congratulations, I’m complaining. Everything is cheaply done, the breakfast was inconsistently labelled, undercooked eggs, and it felt like nobody had any standards. The WiFi is also crap - you can’t stream anything so have to use personal data. Somehow this hotel has 4 stars, but it doesn’t really deserve 1.