Express by Holiday Inn Earls Court

Thank-you so much for taking the time to write your review on our hotel. I am surprised at the points you have made as in the whole of 2009 we have never sold a rate over £140- So if you have paid the sum of £210 per night we need to investigate.

Check in time at the hotel is 2pm, this is stated on all hotel confirmations and correspondence. However if we have a guest that wishes to check in earlier we almost always accommodate this.

All of our team are fluent English speakers and have no problem communicating with guests checking into the hotel. It is unfortunate that you were not happy with your stay, but please do contact the hotel and we will investigate all the things you have mentioned.

My title is the ultimate way to describe this review: if you are able to get a room at this hotel at a bargain price, it will serve you well. If you are not able to get a room at a bargain, look elsewhere. I will make my typical list of pros and cons:

Pros:

*We arrived at the hotel very early due to our long haul flight arriving at Gatwick very early. The desk clerk offered to lock our luggage away so that we could go out but we were all so tired that there was no way we had even the faintest energy to make a sightseeing walk. They allowed us to sit in the lobby to rest and after an hour or so, they had a room ready for us. So I feel that I have to give great praise to the front desk clerk for getting a room together for us five hours before the official check-in time. I will always be grateful for that.

*We were given rooms with twin-sized beds so everyone had her own bed to sleep in, which is nice after you have been crammed on a plane together and need some personal space.

*The bathroom has Dove hand soap and Lux shampoo/body wash. The products were great and saved us some money on toiletries.

*A continental breakfast is provided each morning for 3 or 4 hours.

*There is a pay phone in the lobby.

*The room includes a hair dryer and coffee maker.

Cons:

*We frequently felt like we were not given enough supplies by the maid and had to beg for more at the front desk and this became massively inconvenient. We ran out of towels, soap and kleenex multiple times.

*The trash cans in the room were tiny. If you throw any amount of garbage away, the cans are full.

*We expected the rooms to be small and I would say they are on par with what you find in Manhattan. The rooms have modern furnishings but you will be in for a tight squeeze.

*The bathroom floor was very slippery, as was the shower stall itself. In fairness, the hotel does have a placard up in the bathroom to warn people just how slippery the surfaces are. I learned this the hard way as the first morning in the room, my klutzy tendencies caught up with me and I took a bad fall in the shower. So be careful in the bathroom!

*The electricity will not work if your room key is not in the slot by the door. I am sure this is a good economical move for the hotel but we didn't care for it much. If one person needs to leave the room with the room key and someone else needs to stay behind, it becomes (yet again) massively inconvenient.

*The AC/heat unit in our room made loud rattling and gurgling noises ALL NIGHT every night and this was pretty annoying. We also felt like there was no happy medium-- regardless of how the thermostat was set, it was either roasting hot or freezing cold.

*As minor and fussy as it sounds, there's no layering of blankets on the bed. You get one comforter that is tucked in so tightly you feel like a burrito and that's it. So if the comforter is too hot, you have nothing else to cover up with. You get one pillow, too, so you had better learn how to fold it up if you are not a 100% flat sleeper.

*The mattress was horrible. I ached every morning and I am only 28! I described it as feeling like chicken wire that had been wrapped in Polyfil covering.

*The "business center" has only 2 computers. In order to use the internet, you have to buy time by the hour from the front desk. There is no printer. If you want to print documents, you must email your documents to the front desk and ask for them to be printed off there. Seems like furnishing that area with a printer would help things greatly.

*The breakfast area can get very crowded and very loud on any given morning. The selection of items is not terrible but it's not great either. It's the typical cold food selections of pastries, cheese, yogurt, cereal, coffee, tea and juice. A toaster was provided and I would say that trying to toast two pieces of bread involved a wait of 10 minutes or so. There was a morning when the staff ran out of clean spoons and I thought we were all going to witness a mutiny.

*After a certain hour of the night, the automatic doors are locked. If your trip will involve coming in late or needing to leave very early, you will have to contend with this. The security guard will have to buzz you in and if your hands are full or you are carrying heavy luggage, this will become a pain. It's even worse if it's pouring down rain on you.

*The hotel is close to a couple of different tube stations, each being maybe a five or ten minute walk depending on your pace. We never felt unsafe but I will say that after a certain hour, the sidewalks roll up and everything is closed. The only people left lingering around after, say, 9pm start to look questionable.

With all things considered, we booked the hotel at a fabulous price. If you are looking for total luxury or a romantic getaway, this is not the place for you. If you are like us and traveling to a very expensive city on a tight budget, you should definitely consider this hotel.