Suriya Jayanti 3 weeks ago

Good but definitely not a great hotel. The service is not good. The rooms are nice but small (I was told we'd get a room upgrade and was then not given one). There is nowhere to sit and work except the lobby, which is very small, loud, crowded, and gusty from the ever opening front door. The staff's attitude is the opposite of "how can we help." Mostly the issue with this hotel is the service, which is definitely not 5-star. I agree completely with the other reviews that say the staff just isn't well trained and doesn't seem to understand that 5-star means you're trying to please your guests. Late check out? No, £50/30 minutes. I asked for use of one of the conference rooms to work, and although no one was using them, I was told no (there were parcels in it, he said), and so the hotel left me literally sitting in a corridor on the floor for a meeting. When the same reception guy walked past me SITTING ON THE FLOOR IN A CORRIDOR OUTSIDE THE CONFERENCE ROOM later, he didn't even acknowledge me there. Actually said nothing, went into the conference room to store suitcases in it, and then walked past me again. I guess having people scattered across the floor doesn't upset their "5-star" sensibilities, given that random people were walking in off the street in the lobby to use the wifi. (Update: a manager then came to harangue me for being a "fire hazard"!!! She then offered to rent me a second room or the conference room I'd already been told was unavailable.) The check-in lady when we arrived had no idea what service is . . . asked me to fix her iPad formatting issues, refused the upgrade I'd been promised, told me the price of everything she could name in a weirdly cheap way, tried then to up-sell me for the same upgrade I'd been promised, was remarkably slow, didn't help me when I dropped a bunch of things, and then got confused about why we had no bags (hint: the bellman knew his job, at least at that moment, although he was never otherwise around and we had to carry our own bags everywhere else). The breakfast is good, but the staff forget things every time. The water has to be ordered three times before it arrives. The breakfast tea with milk arrives without milk, et cetera. The maid service is consistently good, but still not 5-star. Our shampoos and conditioners and lotions were never replaced, so at 8:30 with little time before meetings we had to ask for new stuff to be sent up. The shower is left on the handheld setting, not returned to the overhead, so when we turned the shower on we were sprayed by cold water. Oh, and don't stay in a room ending in -10, because they're across from the laundry rooms, so the staff start banging the doors early in the morning. 5-star means excellent. This hotel is not excellent. None of the little things are done well, or done at all. Still, it's good value for the money, because it's cheaper by a considerable margin than other 5-star London hotels . . . probably because it's not 5-star in practice.