We were in the back building which is really quiet in a garden. I was very surprised by the size of this room, usually european hotel rooms are tiny, this was HUGE ! Staff was very nice. Location is good, you have to take the tram into town, but its less than 10 min and they give you a free metro pass. Overall, a great deal.

If your room is on the street then it will be difficult to sleep when trams are operating.
If your room is located on the back then it is ok.
Rooms are decent size and bed and pillows are fine.Overall hotel is old fashion and might deserve refreshment. It is clean but slightly outdated, with old 17" standard TV.
Breakfast is good.
Tram stop is 60m from the hotel.

Shaking of your bed because of the trams running in front of the hotel. Rooms are small and smel bad. Not really friendly or helpfull at the reception. It is not worth the money. 257 franc for a horrible room....

If you are going to the big conference centre in Basel and were thinking of staying at the Swissotel (which joins directly onto the conference centre), you might want to consider the Mercure as an alternative. It's just round the corner from the conference centre: literally 2 minute's walk. Certainly when I booked, it was considerably cheaper than the Swissotel.

I haven't stayed at the Swissotel, which might for all I know be very luxurious and more than justify its extra price tag, but if you want something that's very close by, clean, adequate, and easier to fit within a budget, then the Mercure should do the job nicely.

I had no problems at all with the Mercure. Everything worked, and the staff were perfectly helpful. It's not the height of luxury, but then it's not a flea-pit either: a worthy mid-range hotel. Much as you'd expect from a Mercure, really: normally a reasonably reliable chain. One slightly odd feature was that rather than providing an iron and ironing board in my room, I was directed to an "ironing station" a couple of floors up from my room. Having said that, it wasn't too great an inconvenience, but perhaps it could be if it was a busy time and you found someone else using the ironing station when you wanted to.