Disappointing for an upscale hotel
Written: Jan 16 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Superb location for Tube access
Cons: Nothing of interest nearby; An above-average hotel but a below-average Hilton
The Bottom Line: There are certainly things to like about this hotel, but I'm certain there must be better places to stay in London.
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| shyonts's Full Review: Metropole Hotel |
We visited London in December 2003 and stayed at the Hilton Metropole. While there are certainly good things to say about the hotel, if we went to London again we would almost certainly stay elsewhere.
First, the things we liked about the Metropole:
The Hilton Metropole is literally a block from the Edgeware Road Tube station, where you can pick up several Tube lines, including the very useful District and Circle lines. The hotel is also about a 5-minute walk from Paddington Station, so if you take the Heathrow Express to Paddington and have rolling luggage you can take easily walk to the hotel.
The hotel is clean and attractive and seems to be well-kept. The staff was generally quite friendly and professional as well. Overall you definitely get the impression that you are at an upscale hotel, but you never feel out of place walking through the lobby in jeans.
One of the better features of the guestrooms were the bathrooms, which felt spacious and clean. The showers, in particular, were very nice, and had completely adjustable showerheads, so I had no problems with a too-short shower spraying water too hard, as I find at many hotels.
The hotel has above-average facilities, including a pool/spa and a business center with internet access, printers, fax machines, etc. It would have been nice if these facilities kept longer hours, but that wasn't really much of a problem.
The in-hotel restaurant, Fiamma, serves a magnificent breakfast for the guests (it was free for us, but I don't know if that applies to all guests or not). It is buffet-style, but the variety of food is quite impressive. It was usually our best meal of the day. The only thing they were missing, sadly, was bacon.
One nice thing about the Metropole is that it is one of the largest hotels in the country. So if you book a tour with any of the tour groups this hotel is usually always one of their pickup and drop-off spots.
The express checkout feature was very easy to use and probably saved us quite a bit of time.
Now, the things we didn't like:
For a Hilton, this hotel didn't feel up to snuff. We were in a room in the Tower portion of the hotel, and while we had a great view of the city the room felt a little cramped. We may have only been in a 'standard' room, so it's possible that the 'executive' rooms are considerably nicer.
The heating units in the Tower rooms seem to be an issue as well. We were initially in one room in which the heating unit simply did not blow warm air (and this was in December). The unit in the next room they put us in at least blew warm air, but was rather noisy.
We were also a bit disappointed that room service stopped serving quite a bit of their menu in the middle of the evening. We returned from our first day of sightseeing ready for a good meal but when we called room service we were informed that they were no longer serving many items for the night (items like pizza, not breakfast items or something else you might reasonably expect them to not serve all night).
One night during our stay they were having problems with some of the elevators that serviced the Tower (there are only four elevators to service the 20+ floors). This created an extreme backup in the lobby because each car that was running would be packed with people and would need to stop on every other floor, so it took it quite a while to get back to the lobby. In fairness, we had no such problems any other time during our stay.
To a certain degree this is all nitpicking. This hotel is certainly not a dive, and it is not the worst hotel I've ever stayed in by a long shot. It just didn't live up to my expectations for a Hilton.
As far as location goes, this hotel is great for Tube access, but there is absolutely nothing to see within walking distance. There are a few restaurants around the hotel, as there are just about everywhere in London, but the selection is pretty poor compared to almost anywhere you can go on the Tube.
Between the fact that this isn't a very good Hilton and the fact that there is nothing of interest in walking distance, I would probably stay elsewhere if I returned to London.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
shyonts
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Location: Madison, WI, USA
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 0 members
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