Charing Cross

On behalf of Charing Cross Hotel, we would like to thank you for your positive feedback and look forward to welcoming you back in the near future.

Kind Regards,

The Management Team

Charing Cross – a Guoman Hotel

I traveled to London for a business conference and stayed for 6 nights at the Charing Cross.

Overall impressions: The public areas of the hotel are very nice, with alot of thoughtful and elegant details. The location is fantastic, a great jumping-off point to any sighseeing destination. Hotel staff was friendly, but not overly so. Restaurants were a bit on the slow side for service, although food was decent. As a meeting venue, the ballrooms were well-appointed and conveniently located on one level.

Now for some details:

I travel frequently, both domestically and internationally for work, and have experienced hotels at all levels of service and amenities---I would have to rate the rooms at Charing Cross as average ---- fairly clean (although the carpets could have used a good vacuuming) and moderately spacious (for a large city hotel) with up to date decor. However, I have never, in all my years of travel, experienced beds as hard as this. No exaggeration, the mattress felt like a slab of concrete with a thin layer of foam on top. There was a very nice duvet and lovely pillows, but the mattress had no give whatsoever.

I called down to the front desk to inquire about the firm mattresses, and they informed me that the matresses had all been newly replaced and they could move me to another room, but with no guarantee of a less firm bed. Since I had already unpacked and gotten situated, I opted to stay put.

The first night , mainly due to jet lag , I fell asleep right away even with the firm bed. However, by the second night, I could not get comfortable and ended up with only 2 hours sleep. I had a meeting that day and had to drag myself though it, thinking I could get some rest that evening. Another sleepless night later (this time only got 1 hour) and I was near total exhaustion. I asked if the hotel could provide a feather bed topper or something I could use to pad the mattress. They brough up an extra duvet which I layered on top of the mattress. It didn't help much, in fact by the time I left after 6 nights, I had a good-sized bruise on my hip where it had rested on the mattress every night.

The other rather strange thing was the absence of washcloths in the bathroom. After I got settled upon arrival, I prepared to take a shower and a nap. I went into the bathroom and was pleased to find a heated towel rack (which, unfortunately, never quite got warm enough to do any good), and a small selection of bath amenities. There were also several nice fluffy towels, but no washcloths. I looked all throughout the room for washcloths and finally called guest services. They informed me that the hotel does not have wachcloths. I was a bit confused....how did they expect guests to clean themselves? Was I expected to use a large towel, or just rub a bar of soap over myself (mind you, I had a guest staying with me, so kind of gross to share soap)? Eventually, I got in touch with housekeeping who arrived at my room with a small bag of mismatched washcloths and told me they can only give me two (one for me, one for guest). We had to ask several times during our stay to replenish the cloths, but I thought it was just so odd not to have these in a 'better' hotel. I did notice a note in the guest services book indicating that you can ask for a bathrobe as well, but with a stern warning about entertaining thoughts of 'lifting' it. So perhaps they had a rash of washcloth thefts in the past...very strange nonetheless.

Overall, my stay was mixed. Aside from the washcloth issue, the minor room cleanliness issue, and the sometimes slow service, I probably would have rated this hotel pretty highly had it not been for the beds. Its a shame that this one thing clouded my judgement about an entire hotel, but I will forever remember lying on their concrete bed, tossing and turning, and the exhaustion that followed. Not the way I wanted to remember what was otherwise a lovely trip to a wonderful city.