My family stayed at the Mercure in February during a trip to Poland. Zakopane was lovely -- lots of snow, good skiing, sleigh rides, interesting crafts fair in town, and a lively pedestrian mall downtown. Apparently the Accor head office must have visited between our stay and the earlier reviews posted here, because we found the hotel to be well-managed, with a friendly and helpful staff. The shuttle bus driver was great. The common areas, including the restaurant, have all been updated and looked brand new. The rooms were larger than we expected, but we really didn't spend much time in them. The breakfast was great -- large variety and plentiful. Our son loved the downstairs swimming pool and both our boys used the ski slope which is a stone's throw from the hotel. Our greatest regret is that we didn't have more time to spend in Zakopane. Maybe next winter.

Located 3 Kms from the town centre on the foothills of the mountain range which separates Poland from Slovakia, this hotel is in a beautiful location. There is a chair lift outside the hotel which will take you up one of the hills. We stayed in the hotel 2 nights of Monday 30 and Tuesday 31 August 2004. It was almost empty with we heard just 30 rooms occupied. The hotel has been acquired by the French Accor Group and re-branded in its Mercure range. But there were plenty of items bearing the old Orbis logo. The staff on Reception still had "No" as their first answer to customer inquiries and clearly the friendly Accor ethos has yet to touch them. The rooms had a "Hotel Rules" booklet saying, for example, un registered guests had to be out of guests rooms by 10p.m.! There is a lovely 20m x 20m swimming pool in the basement but it is not open until 08.00 so a swim before breakfast was not possible. The hotel bedrooms have been renovated but work still remains to be done on the reception area, sports changing rooms and - especially - to the exterior which was having porch roof insulation installed during our visit and all wooden cladding replaced. The hotel restaurant served us a better dinner on one night than we could find in any Zakopane restaurant the previous night (it is a tourist trap with many mass catering establishments). The one staff member who really shone was the driver of the shuttle bus who for 3 zloty drove you to town centre. Most other staff seemed steeped in the past. As for the management, they were neither named nor visible. To date, the poorest managed and run of the Accor hotels we have stayed in.

Located in an attractive setting on mountain slopes about 3Km from the centre of Zakopane. We stayed 2 nights Monday 30 and Tuesday 31 August 2004. The former Orbis hotel has been acquired by the Accor Group and rebranded as one of its Mercure hotels. The rooms have been upgraded and are comfortable, and the restaurant served us a tasty interesting dinner. There is a 20m square pool in the basement which is a joy, but not open until 08.00 in the morning. The changing rooms have yet to be refurbished and there was a large programme of replacing all the external wood cladding of the hotel. Where the hotel fell down was the negative attitude of its reception staff who did not understand the Accor Group's frequent guest card and whose reactions seemed too often to be "No". Managers were neither named nor visible. We felt this hotel is still in a pre-1990s East Europe time warp and has some way to go before customers will recognise it as an Accor Hotel other than in name