Hotel Review: Doubletree Marble Arch London

I was excited to check the hotel as it seemed it is a new property with good reviews, I usually stay in the Hilton Metropole on Edgware road and would have been nice to have a second option. We arrived in the hotel around 11am after about an hour of a train delay which might have made a fellow passenger miss his flight to Frankfurt.Funny thing is that I had stayed in the same property about 4 years ago with my friend Nina when she came from Greece, though then it was not a Doubletree and needed a MASSIVE renovation and im glad they have taken over. I know the transformation that the hotel went through from the before and after, I must say it is a big improvement. Upon arrival we were greeted by Valentina and given our Doubletree cookie, they are really yummy and well worth a stay in a Doubletree hotel just for the cookie :). Valentina checked us in, she was nice and polite and managed to get us a room straight away.Upon arrival into the room first impressions were very good from a quick look, through the room was extremely stuffy and had a distinctive smell, I couldn’t make up whether it was smoke or just the fact that there it was not aired.

From the photos I had seen online I don’t think we were upgraded as the room did seem the standard room. I honestly wasn’t bothered so I didn’t even mention it to the front desk, most importantly they did honour my early check in and late check out requests.

Good points:

Let me start with the good points of the room and the hotel as unfortunately it didn’t live up to the Hilton or my standards.The hotel is couple of years “old” so it is relatively new by hotel standards so the furniture is in a fairly good condition. I loved the bathroom tiles for some reason i always keep checking tiles in hotel rooms and making mental notes for my bathroom. :)(Its a girly thing)

The size of the room was adequate for London it had space for a double bed, and a small sitting area containing a char and a table with some magazines. The bed was also comfortable and as we were tired from a whole day out and about I hit the pillow and slept.

However for me the good points stop here. I would like to emphasize that I judge this room for the price I would have paid which for the night we stayed in was £190! As the Amoma offer was for a different hotel and a price that doesn’t come along often. I did have some future plans to check this hotel as is in the middle of some of the best areas and just next to Hyatt Churchill hotel which my room overlooked.

First once I check closely I saw the carpet was filthy, I am not a clean freak and this for me was very dirty, i usually don’t walk on hotel floors with no shoes but for this one i didn’t even step on the floor with no shoes once. There were so many stains that I am sure the cleaner must have seen it along with many other points. The photos don’t do justice to how dirty this carpet was.

Early on, it became apparent that as we overlooked the Hyatt Churchill bar it will be quite noisy and the fact that many people complained on TripAdvisor must mean something. The windows are not double glazed and as a new hotel on three very busy streets double glazing should have been a must. I am sure they kept the old windows from the previous property. When we came up in the evening the noise was even worse as they were having a party downstairs and even with windows shut and curtain drown you can hear them clearly. On our way down for dinner I politely asked the duty manager Abdul to check if there are any more rooms on the other side.This is where I got annoyed by his and his concierge customer service, the last one told me that they are on a busy street and that there are not enough quiet rooms and anyways they will stop after 12 am!! Abdul on the other hand took 20 minutes to look into a screen and tell me he doesn’t have any rooms but only a floor high or on the other busy street on the second floor but it was a twin. He really seemed fed up of these requests as I am sure I was not the only one, however there was no sorry or just a polite remark, no customer service which for this level of price and hotel was not good. It became apparent he wasn’t interested in helping or just delivering some basic politeness of customer service so I told him not to bother and we will deal with it. And that’s what we did.

Once we returned into our room and my husband pulled his side of the bedding he found the brown stain! There is no way the cleaner would have not seen this stain and she/he just left it there on the bedding sheet, it was disgusting. I was already in bed and had no interest in calling and kicking a fuzz we just put a towel on top of it and slept on half the bed as we were knackered. Though had I paid £190 for the night I would be furious and demand compensation.Unfortunately after I had woken up for fajr prayer and went back to sleep it wasn’t uneventful.  To note due to noise we slept at like 1 am, woke up for fajr (morning prayer) at 6 am and we usually sleep after and as it was Sunday we wanted to sleep for longer. Not so much luck. At 8 am there was a massive alarm in our room that went off. Now that I think about it I actually laugh as I got scared and in a state of shock of this fire alarm or whatever it was I run to the phone pressing buttons, run to the door and almost opened it and then stayed in the middle of the room holding my ears. It stopped after about 30 seconds. I was picture perfect I must admit! :)Then a little later someone knocked on my door from maintenance and then some cleaners started chatting outside my door. As this hotel has such thin walls  I would advise them not to especially I could hear the night before someone walking around their rooms above. I have an issue with being woken up abruptly as I get headaches for the rest of the day, thats why I rarely use alarm clocks. So you can guess how that went.

Some small things that we found also:

The curtain had some hooks  missing and it was hanging which on its own is not a big deal but it just build on top of everything, then my husband picked up some of their hotel leaflets and there was a receipt stuck at the back of it! I am sure there must be a cleaner who would have seen all these stuff and it make me wonder how clean my room was overall.Breakfast is in the basement of the hotel, it is a little dark but nice area in brown colours. Not much variety but it had the basic cheeses,eggs, beans, mushrooms, bacon, muffins, cereal and juices. it is more like a three star hotel however it was OK to start you for the day.

Customer service overall in the hotel is below average in my opinion, they seem to just do the basic customer service, no smiles, no welcomes, as if we are bothering them. A place for me is made out of people with good customer service and this place doesn’t have any. You can overlook bad points if the people are nice and I have in the past many times because of the atmosphere. The only person who was nice and did some small talk was Valentina who is a trainee and I hope she keeps it this way and doesn’t take from the rest of the managers and staff.

I would not stay there and I would not recommend this hotel to anyone else because even if they fix the customer service, dirty carpet and linen and the rest of the problems the noise will be enough to put me off. It is loud and I would suggest they actually put some double glazing. I love the location of the hotel as it is just a minute from Oxford street and 3 min from the Marble Arch station however for the price of £190 I would stay in the Hyatt Churchill which is a nice hotel and as a Diamond I get lounge access, breakfast and the rest of the perks. It is usually £200 on average per night and much better option for this price range than the Doubletree. I am planning to check it out and will report on it as well.Don’t be put off by bad hotels to make you stop travelling, the experience is enough.Happy travels 🙂