Originally Posted by
Lizie
Stayed this weekend two nights and really surprised how poor it has become from my last stay. Staff at breakfast complaining over work conditions within earshot, other guests walked into our room after being given our room, a beggar walking around the dining room and the outside patio area asking for money and food, corridors with room service trays from previous evening. Perhaps it was just a bank holiday weekend problem but I'm thinking twice about going back. Got 2,500 points for service recovery.
I have to imagine staff at just about every London-area hotel complain about working conditions since it has to be impossible to make end's meet working at hotel wages in London. It's no wonder that pretty much all the staff are Eastern European, Middle Eastern or Asian. It's also no surprise an increasing number of London hotels are outsourcing housekeeping to third-party companies to reduce labor costs.
This isn't exclusive to London, either. I stayed at a Mercure hotel in Gloucester and found out the hotel used a combination of Eastern European workers (housekeepers, front desk, etc.) and then British workers from a temporary staffing agency for waiter/waitress jobs so sometimes the staff changed every day or two.