To go back a bit, last year we attempted to check into the JW Marriott Grosvenor House London…read morearound 6:30pm.
Although I'd noted our check in time on our reservation, a room wasn't ready. Since we'd had a long flight and had nowhere to go they held our bags for us while we went to get food. We returned about an hour later, with still with no text about our room.
Having no other space to eat we brought our food into the lounge to wait for our room and started eating, only to be interrupted and snidely told no outside food. We replied that we had nowhere else to eat since our room (more than an hour and a half later) still wasn't ready so the lounge attendant went and retrieved our keys, stating they'd been trying to reach us (not true but fine) and we went up to the room.
Now this room, if wasn't the worst room in the whole hotel I would be shocked. It was down a really small corridor and as soon as we opened the door it reeked of cigarettes. It was about half the size of our room the year before and the air quality was terrible
So we go back down to the front desk and I ask if we could get another cleaner room, thinking because they made us wait they were likely fully booked, but surprisingly they switched us immediately to a different room which, funny enough was already ready and had the fantastic A/C unit air quality and size we expected from last year. Funny how that happened.
Fast forward to this year. I was honestly on the fence about staying again and almost posted the review above last year, but I preemptively reached out to our Ambassador to mention the issues we had and to confirm again, that our room needs to be far away from the elevators and to get 24 hour, so our room would absolutely be ready when we got there.
Well they got it half right. The room (one of the worst in the house again) was ready at check in but was right next to a service elevator. We'd had a very difficult flight and problematic Uber ride, so the room being an issue again for the third year in row was really a not great cherry on top.
We went downstairs to ask to switch but they tell us nothing else is available. So we go back up to the room to wait (after noticing our new keys won't work in the lounge yet again this year), except the elevators are giving me the most awful headache. So I finally call our Ambassador and get them involved and they tell me they'll call them.
We head downstairs and the Ambassador team calls me back to tell me the room will be ready in 10 minutes. Fantastic. So I walk up to confirm this with the front desk and they have no idea what I'm talking about. We go back and forth and I let them know we're flying to France in the morning and leaving at 3am (it's 6:30pm by this point) so if they have no room we can go elsewhere. Somehow, shockingly they find something. Again, funny how that happened.
So we get the keys re-made and go upstairs to see the room. It's still not a great room, but it's not near any elevators so we call it good. But once again, our lounge access doesn't work, so we have to go down again to get them re-made.
However once we finally get access - the lounge attendant hassles us (yet again) - this time for grabbing a bottled sparkling water because apparently they changed the rules since last year and nothing can be removed from the lounge.
That first year we stayed you could grab waters from the lounge to bring to your room, but sure fine, inflation. Mention it at check in and post a sign in the lounge.
The next evening we get back after having had maybe 14 hours of sleep in 3 days and guess what doesn't work again - our key. They hadn't warned us the merged stay would break the key. So back down we go to get it re-keyed, only to next day excitingly discover yet again the lounge access on the new keys doesn't work. So again, we have to get new keys.
While the first year was quite nice, the last two years have been the worst check in processes we've ever had while traveling. The lounge attendants are rude and the customer service experience is terrible. At the end of the day we gave them a second chance and it ended up being worse than the time before so we won't be staying with them again.