Cannizaro House

We had our second stay at this hotel (our first was in April 2007) and booked in for four nights. We requested a room with a view over Wimbledon Common and the hotel duly obliged. As I say, the location and view is wonderful but the hotel staff are not.

We arrived very early from our overnight flight and were given a very lukewarm reception on arrival. The receptionist couldn't even be bothered to say 'good morning' and then kept us waiting for ages as he tried to locate our booking, or so it seemed. It transpired that he was trying to find a room that would be available for us at 8am but we were not aware of that and had said we were happy to leave our bags and check in later. That said, the hotel was good enough to find us a room that we could check into on the spot.

They had a wedding booked in for the weekend which was taking up a large part of the hotel and the rooms. We were given a room on the top floor with the requested view. Unfortunately due to the somewhat unseasonably warm weather in late August in London the room was boiling. Being an old country house there is no air-conditioning and opening the windows did nothing to help matters. Having struggled with it for the two nights I then asked the receptionist/duty manager to provide fans. Admittedly he did say he would try and find us another room but with a wedding party in town I said we would just take the fans. Easier said than done. The receptionist was much more interested in dealing with the wedding party and not remotely bothered about helping us. The only way to get their attention is to ask to speak to the manager; the duty manager (also doubling up as a receptionist) of course says he is in charge (heaven help this hotel!) so you then need to ask to speak to someone else who may be able to help. I then met with another manager who noted down all our complaints (more of which listed later in this review) and said they would try and make the rest of our stay enjoyable. A free coffee/tea on the house was the extent of that customer service/satisfaction.

Another issue is the dining room. The in-room guest services guide provides a menu but also states you can order off the menu and the hotel will do their best to help. Having spent a long day out we went to the restaurant and asked if we could order from their menu and have it served in our room. Again, met with a very frosty response and told that would be a decision for the chef and we would have to see! We decided not to risk the wrath of the chef or the dining room staff any further and ate in the restaurant. In fact we ate their a couple of times (excluding breakfast) and the food is nice but not that special so I am not sure how it would suffer from being delivered up to a room. And, on the note of food, our final breakfast there on Monday morning was horrendous. No doubt it was the B team in charge that morning but they managed to provide our breakfast at two temperatures - some of it hot/warm and the rest cold. In addition, the black pudding (I know it is previously cooked) was not even re-cooked and they had just taken the wrapping off it and sliced it and put it on the plate! The large cooked Portabello mushroom resembled and tasted like a Pirelli cast-off.

The staff attitude is not great but when you do get to speak to a manager they seem to be very helpful and courteous but unfortunately it does not filter down.

All in all, a pretty expensive hotel and probably not worth the money unless you want to be in that location.

Please do not misunderstand me, this is a sumptuous hotel superbly located on Wimbledon Common. The surroundings are stunning and the stylish interior is undeniably alluring. That said the staff are, on the whole, amateurish to the point no return. There is a passive aggression, quietly stated and yet clearly visible to the naked eye, which makes for some tenser moments than one would expect in the hotel of this quality.

The mismatch between surroundings and service is marked - with some outstanding exceptions - by a tense, irritable off handedness. The crowning human monuments to this chasm like charm deficit are the chippy rather tense young male receptionists. Their demeanour smacks more of inexperience than anything truly sinister but at the prices charged here such teenage stropping and petulant eye ball rolling ought to be absent

The hotel is, for obvious and admirable reasons, popular with wedding parties who obviously take priority given their numbers and the volume of their consumption. Acceptable? Not really given that the room rates charged to non-wedding guests do not reflect the second class status afforded them. It may be more honest for Cannizaro to either a) inform incoming guests not belonging to a wedding party that they may face some barriers to normal service, forewarned is forearmed and / or b) offer a non wedding rate reduction to reflect this reality. The hotel does not seem large enough in scale to accommodate both wedding and non wedding guests, they should simply be honest about that.

To balance the piece, I have to say that that the stunning interior does lend the hotel a true sense of gravitas and authority though the narrow corridors and traditional lay out create heat traps which make some rooms (especially those facing the Common) stiflingly hot in the summer. In addition, the hotel’s own guide book was clearly penned by either a crazed brand disciple or dyed in the wool optimist since entries concerning items like the room service menu and other services offered are simply not as they are they are proudly purported to be. These sorts of inaccuracies should simply be tightened up, hardly a Herculean task.

The management, when one does encounter them on their rare sorties around the hotel , are very good and to be fair they do stand out like blue marlin in a shoal of herring. Sadly, it is the rather damaging lack of a sufficient numbers of reliable lieutenants and the permeating undercurrent of surly bad manners which let this jewel of a hotel down so badly.