Helpful staff. Room was clean, comfortable and air-conditioned but a bit dark as it was at the back of the hotel. Bathroom had a good shower and a separate toilet. Buffet breakfast was good and included in the price. The location was excellent - only a few minutes walk from the lake and the old town and yet round the corner from the train and bus station. There was no restaurant in the hotel but this was not a problem as Annecy is a holiday resort with a variety of restaurants especially in the old town. I would stay in this hotel again if back in Annecy.

The Mercure Chain is a garantee that there are no surprises. But this hotel is worth notice. It's only two blocks from the Lake on one side and two blocks from the historic "vieille ville" on the other side. The rooms are small but the hotel was renovated recently. The staff is quite friendly and helpful. Please note that it is impossible to park in Annecy. But the parking was not a problem at all. You can unload in front of the hotel and park there for up to an hour +. And then put the car in a parking garage only 2 blocks away ( left at the corner and then right on rue de la poste). The hotel will pay for the overnight part of your parking bill from 7 PM until 8 AM. They give you a "contremarque". First, you put your parking ticket/receipt in the machine and then the hotel ticket/"contremarque" and you pay the difference. Also , as is the cas at all Mercure Hotels, if you are over 55 you only pay for 1 buffet breakfast, the other is on the house. This hotel does not have a restaurant but you are very close to those in the vieille ville or to those just 100 meters away in the courtyard of Cour du Pre Carre. We liked "Ah' La Belle excuse"

Look to be honest, this appears to be a lovely hotel, and from the outset it is. My wife and I booked a room for 3 nights on Hotels.com which was supposed to include a double bed and sofa. What we got was a double bed only in what was effectively the roof. Admittedly it was very hot during summer when we stayed, but a roof is a very hot place to be in the heat. To make matters worse, it was half a room. The roof line cut the room in half. When I mentioned this to the receptionist, she said that I have to understand that French rooms are very small. I said that I have never had to crawl on my hands and knees to get to the minibar! What a joke!

To be fair, from what I can see, the rest of the hotel is fine. There is a breakfast room, parking deal, was very handy to the station and a 2 min walk to the old town of Annecy, which is delightful. The bed was super comfy and the sheets, high thread-count and very clean. The lift might be small and old, but at least it works! You have to pay for Wifi internet which not many other hotels charge for these days - I think that is an old Mercure thing? They need to get with it a bit more.

I would recommend this hotel to anyone, but try and avoid the 4th floor, as effectively all those rooms are located in the roof.

We stayed for 5 nights at Mercure Annecy Center at the end of May, 2010 and and enjoyed the hotel and the town a great deal..

The Mercure is a small operation of about 40 rooms. Despite the fact that it bills itself as a business hotel, in fact we found that the other guests while we were there were generally tourists. This, however, didn't detract from our experience – in fact, the more laid-back clientele may have made it more enjoyable.

The hotel is immaculately clean and tidy and well maintained, though very small in every respect, from the lift (elevator) to the breakfast room, the lobby and the bedrooms. However, by some minor miracle, the smallness of all these features is used to the best advantage, and the result is an eminently liveable establishment – five days was certainly not overdoing it.

For example, the breakfast room is tiny, however by some mystical means the staff are able to fit in a quite excellent spread, including hot scrambled eggs and bacon, and an excellent mix of cheeses and breads and cereals and fruits. We were worried that the room would be overrun in the morning (as we've seen in a number of much larger places in the US and Canada) but somehow the guests seemed to regulate themselves so there was never a problem getting a table or having enough to eat.

The staff at all levels of the hotel were very pleasant and helpful, and always prepared to go out of their way to assist. In particular, the front desk people were wonderful, and the hotel manager, Isabelle, helped us iron out a problem we were having with our rental car, going well beyond what could reasonably be expected.

To us the standout feature of the hotel after the staff was undoubtedly its proximity to everything that mattered, including the railway station – a TGV stop – which is less than a 300 yard flat walk away. There was no major facility that was more than 6 or 7 minutes walk from the front door.

For example, a stroll of around five minutes would get us to the vast array of eating places in the old town. These offer mostly French and Italian cuisines, with the Haute Savoie speciality of Tartiflette being ubiquitous (and generally delicious). If you need a break from mountain food, there is a good Chinese restaurant, Le Mandarin, at 9 Rue de la Gare, again less than 5 minutes away. It has a full complement of Chinese and Vietnamese dishes, and the management and staff are friendly and helpful. They also do take-away meals if that's the way you're inclined. The menu is in English as well as French, which was handy as the French names for Chinese dishes often bear no relationship to what might be considered the “standard” English names.

There's a very clean, reasonably priced self-serve laundrette about 5-6 minutes walk from the hotel at 5bis Avenue de Chevene – on the opposite side of the road to the station, about 20 metres past the Europcar office. Finding a place like this in a relatively small town in Europe is a bit of a miracle, and we happily took advantage of it. Likewise, the lake front and the beautiful walks around it are 5 minutes away, as are the tourist information office, the local bus station and a number of rental car locations.

But no place is perfect, and the irksome thing for us at the Mercure was the arrangements to do with cars. It is to be expected that a small hotel in a small town in rural France on the outskirts of a mediaeval town will have some restrictions on car access, but this is especially problematic at the Mercure. For example, there is one area outside the front door where you can park on the pavement whilst unloading the luggage, but its limited to 5 minutes. After that, you'll need to drive to a local underground parking station with which the hotel has a discount parking arrangement. Its only a one minute drive, 3 minute walk, away, but you do have to pay (around EUR12-15 per day if you leave the car there all day – the charging rules were rather opaque to us – less if you're out during the day). The biggest problem with the arrangement is that you need to take the car out every day, even if all you do is drive around the block and take it back.

The parking thing is a bit of a pain, but certainly won't mean we won't be back – we certainly will be as the Mercure Annecy Centre was one of the highlights of our five weeks in Europe. Maybe next time we'll go by train, or maybe make some more creative arrangements regarding parking, but we will be back.