Travelling to London for an event at the Royal Albert hall, we needed a hotel in the west end of the city, one which could offer car parking facilities. I didn't imagine that would be as difficult as it turned out to be, as most city hotels don't offer a car park, and even those that do charge a small fortune.
We eventually settled on the Ibis at Earls Court – an ideal location for us, not far from the RAH, and a car park costing a mere £17 for 24 hours. I made the booking online well in advance but on examining the details before the date, discovered an error which the hotel tried to resolve.This ended up in having to spend a long time at Reception on check-in, as they struggled to resolve the corrections made. While this might have been partly understandable, it should not have been the case that we had to wait equally long – if not longer – while one of the staff tried to book us in for breakfast! Maybe this wouldn't have been so bad if the person in question had been apologetic, or even communicative, but this was unfortunately not the case. We were left with the impression that it was just too much trouble to meet our requests. There is a sign in their Reception about high standards of customer service, but our experience was that they were not high at all!
We had further problems in the bar that evening, which was packed with 'delegates' from a conference that had taken place in the hotel that day. The waiter told us that they were supposed to go into the restaurant but had refused to do so. The result was lack of tables, slow service and a wait of over 45 minutes for two of our meals. Fortunately, one of the staff did try to compensate us with free coffees but it didn't really make up for another poor experience for us. Maybe the hotel cannot cope when conference delegates stay on.
The hotel itself was above what we had expected for a basic hotel, but there are certainly some areas where it could improve.
