Lonsdale Hotel

This is not a hotel. It's place that rents dirty, unsafe rooms from a receptionist with a diploma in rude. There are other comptetively priced and good hotels with a few hundred yards. Avoid the Lonsdale at all cost!!!

I am a fairly easy going traveler - after time in Thailand with just a mattress and a fan on breeze blocks I would say that it takes a lot to upset me. I have stayed in the Lonsdale twice now - once over a year ago when I had a conference nearby for work. I didn't think it was the cleanest of places with ripped wallpaper and disgusting breakfast, but it wasn't too bad. I accidently booked it again as I had 2 meetings on Thur/ Fri this week and it was close by. This time I was given a room that smelled extremely mouldy and damp (the woman next door was coughing all night - probably the damp on her lungs). While having a lie down before dinner 2 people just walked into the room. The staff were rude and uncooperative whenever I spoke to them. The icing on the cake was that when I awoke on Friday morning I was covered in bites - all over my arms, legs and feet (some even on my face), what I hope were only bedbugs (and not fleas or scabies). I was in a rush in the morning and the woman was occupied (plus hadn't noticed the itching too much at that point) so I left the hotel to get to my meeting. When I got there I noticed all the red lumps and showed it to a colleague who said it looked awful. I got home last night, the things are itching like mad and I called the hotel. The woman had some problems understanding me as I explained the bites, then said it was nothing to do with them - I said they needed to get the room cleaned thoroughly. I asked for a manager, she said there wasn't one and put the phone down on me. I have called environmental health and intend to pursue a complaint.

Some things never change!

The Lonsdale makes Fawlty Towers look like a nice place to stay!

My elderly mother and I stayed in this dump back in September 1984.

We had what was supposed to be the “best room” in the hotel, it was in back of the kitchen with no view out the window, noisy in the morning (when one was trying to sleep) and had only a “[-]-in” sink (the toilet was down the hall and the bathtub was upstairs).

Can you believe this place came with the recommendation of a travel agent!

The breakfast was highly greasy and a “heart attack on a plate”, the staff proved to be arrogant and mostly unfriendly. I left my Michelin London Guide book on the bed in my room and when I returned in the evening it went “missing”, when I told the manager he made it clear he didn’t give a [-] (he was a Monty Python stereotype of the Upper Class Twit of the Year).

Moreover, on our last night I returned independent of my mother around 11:00pm and rang the front door bell for the desk clerk to let me in for almost 15 minutes, finally another guest let me in (24 hour front desk is a crock). The Canadian snot that was the desk clerk then came out to demand to know what I was doing in this hotel. When I told her, I was staying there and “thank you” for coming to let me in. She told me I should have asked for another key on check-in, thanks for telling me on my last night [-]!

Folks, pay a little more money and stay in a better place for what may well be an once-in-a-lifetime trip to London, this place proved depressing.