I travelled with my daughter to London all the way from New Zealand for a combined work and holiday trip. It was her first time in London, and I wanted this trip to be something she would remember. I spent a lot of time looking for a good hotel in Kensington and I picked 54 Queens Gate, due to its convenient location for my conference and the good reviews and high rating in Tripadvisor and Booking.com. On the positives, I will list the extremely good and convenient location, the tasteful décor in the lounge and rooms and some of the staff, being polite and helpful. Otherwise, our stay did not confirm the high ratings for this hotel, which create high expectations, unfortunately not met. I had booked a ”double deluxe” room, which came at a price higher than the standard. Initially, we were given a tiny room on one of the upper floors (Room 20) for which you had to go up two different lifts and a few stairs. The room was not what was shown in the photos as a double deluxe (although they tried to tell me that it was in this category). It was also very hot, and the air conditioning was not working properly and was too noisy. It was impossible to stay there for 6 nights, so we immediately said we were disappointed. Luckily, they had a bigger room available in the lower ground floor (basement?), Room 2, which we happily took. The room was relatively clean, but the floor was not, and I had to specifically ask them to vacuum the floor. Later we discovered that a terrible sewer smell was coming from the drains, and the ventilation in the bathroom was not enough to improve the situation, luckily there was a patio door we could open for airing the room. The toiletries offered, although good quality, they were in very limited quantity, hardly enough for one person. Some of the staff were stressed, unaccommodating and grumpy. Breakfast was basic. After the second day we decided to have breakfast in the room, and we were served by an annoyed lady who seemed to hate us for ordering in the room (although this is advertised in the services, also note they don’t serve cooked breakfast in the rooms). On the last night, I made the mistake to ask reception to book a taxi for me. They told me to book an uber, and when I said that I don’t have an uber account, the person at the reception said they would have to ask their manager in order to book a taxi for me. On our check out they asked us how our stay was. I gave them honest and direct feedback, on which the manager responded aggressively, trying to blame everything on us (e.g., for asking for a taxi). They said no one else had complained about the smell from the sewers before, while I read similar reports from other customers on Booking.com and tried to blame us, for not reporting it earlier, supposedly they would have fixed it. I expect that they will try to respond in a similar manner to my review. I advise the traveler to take my review seriously and either lower their expectations or make an alternative choice f
242 Reviews