Good stay at Novotel Canary Wharf

100   Recommended
Room 3001 , Executive
July 27, 2017 by

 Map | 9 Reviews | 33% Recommended
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Novotel London Canary Wharf
 Map | 9 Reviews | 33% Recommended

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Room 3001

Executive

Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
Stats
Room
Executive

To start this review, I must say that I have been looking forward to this hotel since reading Goldorak's reviews on here, so when the Novotel 50 year promotion (£50 per room per night) was launched I thought that it would be the perfect excuse to spend a weekend in London.

Check In

There were a couple of people in front of me a check-in, but it only took a couple of minutes to get through to somebody, there are check-in desks here and also staff walking around and you can check-in at the seating area in the Lobby, I didn't notice a priority check-in line. The first encounter with the staff was great and I agree with Goldorak, I did really feel welcome here!

Room

We started our stay in the nice corner room 3001 with windows towards the north (canary wharf) and the west, some great views on a clear day! (we received a 2 category upgrade)

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Room 3001

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Floor plan

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Views of Canary Wharf

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Views of London

The bed was great, the decoration was also fresh and felt different and the whole room was very bright. My welcome gift and a letter was waiting in the room.

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Welcome gift

The minibar was stocked with interesting products that I would actually like to drink/eat for once! (I usually find the offering dull). There were 4 free bottles of VOSS water (2 still and 2 sparkling), a nespresso machine and Dammam Freres tea. You can also find a decent u;brella in the cupboard that was very usefull for us :)

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There was no turndown, but they did put 2 chocolates on the pillow in the evening. There is a decent selection of food and drinks for room service (including wine by the glass).  I did have 2 problems during our first night:

-The bluetooth speakers (Boose) are too powerfull, there was a "party" in the room above ours and we could feel the vibrations and hear the songs, it started after we had fallen asleap and we thought that the music was from Bokan, so we didn't call the front desk to tell them as we didn't want to get dressed, repack and move (our mistake as we found out).

-The curtains were not wide enough, they covered the windows but not the sides, as the sun rose at 05:17 in London today, it was very bright very early and this woke me up.

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Blurry pic of in the morning

I went to reception in the morning and told them about the noise, and there was a guest services duty manager there who took my case, and we had a great discussion about the hotel and Le Club (in French as he was French), he offered to show me the other available rooms (2 executive rooms available that night, the hotel was busy!) and we took an accessible room on the 31st floor facing towards Greenwich park (also a nice view!), the curtains on this room were also a lot better, but it did have less storage space (not as issue for us).

And a couple of minor topics from my perspective: there were already stains on the carpets of both of the rooms we had, the carpets are quite light to they stain fast I guess. There was only 1 pair of slippers and bathrobe in both rooms (for 2 guests). The Air Conditionning in our second room would turn back on every time that I took the key-card out (=leaving the room) and put it back in, I don't think that this is supposed to happen.

Based on this experience, I would avoid the corner rooms (xx01 and possibly xx03 and xx15) if you are sensitive to the light waking you up in the morning (during summer time at least), but the rooms were really nice and the beds very comfortable.

Club Lounge

I was able to use the club lounge both nights that I was there, the club lounge is open all day, and anybody seems to be able to access it as it isn't closed off. I went there in the morning to see what they offer, and only found yogourts, fruit juice and hot drinks, they told me that they didn't offer food in the morning. Not great if you count on this for breakfast.

During the evening they offer "complimentary drinks and canapés from 6pm to 8pm daily", we arrived at around 19:00 both evenings, and didn't really enjoy it much!

The options were:

-House red or white wine

-Beer (Moretti or Peroni, not sure which one)

-Hot drinks

-Soft drinks

Not a great offering, and no cocktails as I expected... But this was far better than the "Canapes" offering!

On Saturday there was no food at all! On Friday there were trays of "canapes" that were put on one table for everybody to help themselves, and it was chaos! As soon as a tray arrived, those who knew what to do ran up to it and stuffed themselves emptying it within secconds! There were 3 such trays brought out over 1 hour.

Before we arrived the people were actually taking the trays of food to their own tables. Needless to say that we didn't eat much, we didn't get to try the sweet offerings and only 2 of the savory canapes. I was far from impressed! They clearly need to change how they manage this and in my opinion improve the drinks offering for this to be a clear benefit of the hotel.

On the positive side, once we ordered our drinks, the staff made sure that our glasses were always topped up, and warned us before they stopped serving drinks.

Dining

Bokan is a key part of this hotel, is covers 3 floors of the hotel: 37 is the restaurant part, 38 is the bar section and 39 also has a bar and the outdoors terrace. Breakfast is served on the 37th and 38th floor.

Regarding dinner, it would have been possible to have dinner here on Friday without having booked in advance, they didn't seem to be as busy as during the week, but it wasn't possible to have a table at the bar on Friday or Saturday evening without booking.

We decided to have a Pizza at "Canary Coffee" instead as we were not very hungry, and we enjoyed it.

We booked a table for drinks on the Saturday night, and it was loud and crowded, a popular place to go for a night out! As such the service wasn't great. The drink menus only had Wine and cocktails, no information on beers of soft drinks. Our water's shift also ended whilst we were there, so after a while we were not able to order more drinks without going to the bar...

I had 2 drink vouchers as the check-in lady wasn't sure if the voucher was for 1 or 2 drinks (it didn't state anything). We ordered a house white (I didn't enjoy it much), a beer (great selection available) and a cocktail. When I went to pay, they said that the 2 vouchers covered all of it as each voucher is for 2 drinks. I was expecting to have to pay for the cocktail.

We also had breakfast included in our rate, breakfast is served on the 37th and 38th floor, I would suggest the 37th for a more comfortable seating with more food options (although you can go up and down if required), it was very busy and on Sunday morning we took possibly the last table available. The breakfast was good, it had cooked to order eggs, hot options (including pancakes and waffles as well as the savory options), decent bread with cold cuts and cheese, smoked salmon, pastries and gluten free muffins and bread. A nice point was the butter and yogourts are from "Bellvaire", a famous brand from near my hometown in France :)

Overall not the best breakfast that I have had, but a solid one and a good way to start the day, especially as I have seen breakfast rates for only a few ££s extra.

Overall

Overall we missed out on a perfect stay due to the issues on the first night and a member of staff walking into our room without knocking at one point, but we still really liked the hotel itself. The platinium recognition was great, the club lounge is a nice addition but doesn't really do it for me yet after having visited a few Asian ones (including the Novotel Beijing Peace's amazing lounge). The staff were impecable except for the super busy bar on Saturday night (not the best time to use your drink vouchers!!) and we are definately looking forward to our next stay there, especially as the price can be reasonable over the weekend (price was just over £100 per night including breakfast for our dates), and it was a steal for the £50 per night rate that we got (and had breakfast added due to some issues we had with the booking process).

And a nice addition is their webcam showing London from the hotel, they screen it from the lounge:

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Live feed here: http://camera.deckchair.com/novotel-canary-wharf-london-uk

65 Comments

This review lives in the Novotel London Canary Wharf : super top stay and a big rejuvenation to the Novotel br thread.
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