Our London Hotel Dilemma...

A few weeks back my baby (he's not really a baby) brother and I took a long awaited vacation.  Well it was for me personally anyways.  I've been sooo stressed up with all that's been going on at work and everything else this was a very much welcomed delight (and surprise).

We had our travel arrangements (i.e. flights) set and booked our hotel online and even got the London Pass ready for the trip.  I'm not sure if I'll be doing another post on the trip or not (maybe I will with photos of places we managed to go to) but this post is basically gonna be about our disappointment with the hotel we'd booked online and should've gone for our first choice right from the start (which is where we ended up going to).

So basically, we went to the Hotels-London website to check out hotels (below GBP100) in the Bayswater area and after reading the reviews, viewing photos of the hotel and some discussion, we decided on Princes Square hotel which is about 400m walk from Bayswater tube station.

This is what the hotel room looked like on the Hotels-London website:

Gorgeous right? The price range for a night's stay in a Double Room was between GBP70+ to GBP90+ at the time.  We didn't mind if the room was small.  Apparently, hotel rooms there are comparatively smaller than what we Asians are used to.  Anyways, imagine our surprise when we went up to our room and found it to look a little like this:

This photo is from the hotel's website and the photo above is of a Triple Room I think.  We wanted a Double Room (i.e. with a Double Bed) and when we checked in we were told that they didn't have a Double room available for us.  Instead, we were checked into a Twin Room (below - photo from Agoda).

Even the beds there aren't the same size as those we Asians are used to.  Their twin beds were really single beds (not super single) and we barely had room to move around in there.  I wasn't feeling well during my stay there so we didn't really take any photos of the room.  Good thing we managed to get a refund for 7 out of the 9 nights we'd booked there (had to pay 2 nights stay due to their 48 hours cancellation policy).  The room was hot and suffocating.  We'd requested for a fan and that made it a teeny bit better.  Fortunately they had a pretty decent tower fan but it took up more space in the room.  The closet was about a foot deep and the only thing that was pretty nicely furnished was probably the bathroom.  Haha.  The reservation came with breakfast and well, the breakfast serve was OK.  They had cereal, fruits, oats, breads and buns as well as yoghurt with coffee and tea as well.

We felt misled and deceived.  Fortunately we got to move.  So before checking out the next day, we went to a nearby internet cafe (GBP1.50 for 75mins) and made bookings for the other hotel that we'd originally wanted to stay at.  We managed to get internet rates for the last 7 nights and regular published rates for that day which wasn't that bad.

Being Malaysians abroad, really makes you miss home.  So we ended up switching to Berjaya Eden Park Hotel which was less than 20m from Bayswater tube station. *smile*.  So this is what the room looks like on the Hotels-London website:

We only managed to get the Superior Double Rooms which are the newly renovated rooms (yay!).  For TV buffs like us, the 32" (I think) LCD TV was great compared to the 14" CRT wallmounted TV in our previous hotel.  There weren't even decent channels to watch in the previous hotel.  Now you might say that we should be outside exploring London instead of staying in the room watching TV.  But honestly, it would be incredibly boring without TV there (considering lack of freely available WiFi connections in the city).  Stores close early and attractions are mostly closed at 5.30pm.  What else was there to do after dark (we roam around til it's almost dark and head back after dinner)? We loved that the new room was more spacious and we could unpack and pack more comfortably (we came with 2 luggage bags and went home with 3 ballooned up luggages plus carry ons and plastic bags).  By the way, the room looked exactly like the photos above. :) They didn't have a lot of fans stocked up and the last one they had and brought up (a tower fan) to our room was faulty.  It was practically toppling over!! I was amazed that they still thought it was OK to use it honestly.  Haha.  Just because it blew wind didn't mean it was safe to use especially with the top part detached from the base and was practically only held together by the internal cables. We requested they took it back and spent the nights sleeping with the windows open (cool breeze).

Although we got a Double Room at Eden Park, the bed was still a foot shorter than my Queen Size bed at home.  Weird.  I thought Queen Size beds came standard. The bathroom was nice and sufficient despite it's size.  And the wardrobe was a lot more spacious for our jackets/coats and bags and shopping treasures.  Best part is they actually had a safe inside the room which was really handy.  I would've liked the room to have a double lock like the ones we have in our hotels here instead of just the knob lock (which can be opened by the housekeeping staff despite having turned the lock).  Since we were in the newer wing (I think), we had to take a flight of stairs up to the 1st floor then either another flight of stairs on another part of the building or the lift to the second floor.

OMG the lifts in both hotels were tiny!!  I'd say equivalent to a 1 or 2 star hotel in KL?  If you've been to Agora Hotel at Bukit Bintang, it's kinda like that.  The hallways are super narrow and the same goes for the stairs.  Nonetheless, the staff at Eden Park were really nice and helpful.  I wouldn't mind staying there again if given the chance.  Bayswater is a nice place to stay.  There are lots of souvenir shops along the Queensway Rd and there's lots of eateries in the area.  There is a mall at the end of the road near Westbourne Grove called Whiteley's that has stores like H&M, Zara, Tie Rack and a few more.  I believe they even have a cinema in there somewhere.  And of course a supermarket (Marks & Spencers). Across the street you can drop by SuperDrug and Boots (local drugstores) which usually open til 11pm or mighnight (except on Sundays where everywhere is closed early).

Anyways, Tune Hotels are opening their London hotel soon and it's located smack in the middle of the city at Westminster Bridge Road.  Looks decent and it's practically across the street from Lambeth North (Bakerloo Line) tube station and nearby the Waterloo station (Jubilee, Northern and Waterloo & City lines) as well.  Since it's by the roadside, buses shouldn't be too hard to come by either.