KatW

Hope you plan to report here on your stay.

RichardInSF

I have just finished a two night stay at the newest London Hyatt, the Great Scotland Yard hotel. It will be my last stay.

I had booked a king suite, which already seemed tiny as listed at 332 sq ft. The actual room feels even more claustrophobic as fully 1/3 of the total space is taken up by a hallway and the bathroom. The remaining suite part looks and feels like two well-furnished closets separated by a wall.

Fortunately, when I finally reached the front desk manager, he was able to move me to their top category room, the Sherlock suite. There is only one of these and it is 433 sq ft.This is the one room in this hotel that I would recommend to anyone from the luxury hotel forum. It's still small for a suite, but it is (in the words of Mark Twain) the only room in the entire hotel that you can "...swing a cat in, without doing damage to the cat."

That's really too bad because the service, furnishings, and amenities at the hotel are at the luxury hotel level.

SanDiego1K

Thanks for your report. This will certainly keep me from staying here. Space is a top priority for me.

RichardInSF

Closest hotel with good sized suites is the Corinthia.

Nizar

I know it's not really a favourite here, but have there been any recent stays at the Corinthia ?

What have the overall thoughts and impressions been on hard product and service etc ?

The spa seems amazing

m0hamed

I was looking at this hotel yesterday. The photos on Hyatt’s website look great, but I always look for travellers’ videos on YouTube of exact room types.

LoyaltyLobby did a room tour and it looked tiny, just like you describe. The suite also appeared to be on street level wity cars parked by the window

offerendum

The video is very interesting. On the one hand the furniture is quite nicely done and the bathroom is indeed good sized, especially the generous shower. Therefore the 2 rooms are really small and I guess many people would have problems not to laugh if they shall explain others it's a window in the bedroom. If this is the biggest suite in the hotel the other rooms must be terrible tiny and I fully understand RichardInSFs comments.

EuropeanPete

I'm off to check out Great Scotland yard next week and will report back. I've generally avoided it because of the room size issues, but I have Hyatt nights I need to turn in by the end of the year, the exceptional Dukes is fully booked and hotels in general are 50%+ above normal rates.

RichardInSF

I held off replying because I have not stayed here that recently, but as no one else has commented, I thought I'd put in a few thoughts about the rooms.

The lower room categories are (in order): deluxe, executive, and junior suite. They are all just regular rooms and the differentiator is by size.

The lowest room category that actually is suite-like is deluxe junior suite. This is what I booked last time and it had a separate room from the bedroom with a nice desk in it. Hard product was excellent. My problem was that all the deluxe junior suites face an interior courtyard and have no view or mobile reception. Sure, there was wifi, but getting or making network voice calls was impossible.

It's unfortunate because this latter problem can be easily fixed with inexpensive femto-basestations in the courtyard Maybe they have done so by now, but that level of technical knowledge seemed to be above the folks I mentioned it to back then.

They generously moved me at no additional charge to a regular suite, which was a bit quirky in shape due to the building design but overall quite lovely. There are few, if any, rooms with a great view here, but the suites at least overlook the street.

I didn't test the service levels much so can't comment on that.

Nizar

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Funnily enough, deluxe junior suite is the exact same room type that I was looking at. But the phone reception thing could be annoying hmm.

jkirk

We had a generally decent five-night stay at the Corinthia last month. We booked well in advance at an Amex FHR rate that gave us the fourth night free, so it represented good value for us over the leadup to the London Marathon, which my wife was running. The Corinthia is exceptionally close to the finish line, so location was the biggest factor in our choice.

We were in an executive room, which faced onto the courtyard and was spacious for London, although much of the real estate was a large walk-in closet/dressing room. This all worked well for us, giving us ample space for our more-than-usual luggage, and we liked the quiet that came with the courtyard exposure. The neighborhood got somewhat rowdy on the some of the nights we were there, which may have been a function of marathon weekend. Hard product and public spaces were all vary nice, and we had an outstanding dinner at the Tom Kerridge restaurant on property. Front desk staff were friendly and efficient, and happily accommodated our request for a noon checkin.

We didn't have any of the technological/reception issues mentioned above.

We had one major glitch at the outset of our stay, as the driver the hotel had arranged to pick us up at Heathrow didn't want to wear a mask, telling us he was "medically exempt" and not required to do so. We had, however, insisted from the hotel when we booked the car that we'd be assigned a fully vaccinated driver who would wear a mask, and the hotel gave us that assurance. (This was our first trip abroad since the onset of Covid, and we did not want to risk getting stuck in the UK, as my wife would be running the Boston Marathon a week after London). The driver, grumpily, ultimately agreed to wear a mask when it became clear we were not going to get into his car otherwise. We told the concierge staff about the experience, and they were appropriately annoyed on our behalf, and waived the fee for that car transfer.

The biggest annoyance of the stay was failure of housekeeping to replenish coffee cups, drinking glasses, etc. It was impossible to have a cup of tea in the afternoon, or a nightcap from the minibar, because everything was cleared away at morning by housekeeping and never replaced. So every day we would have to call requesting this stuff, and eventually housekeeping would bring us glasses, cups, etc., although often not what we asked for. It was an annoyance, and when we complained, hotel staff seemed confused as to why we'd be bothered by this. My guess is that it's a result of staffing shortages, and it struck me as fairly typical of the sort of shortcoming that is common at luxury properties (outside the very top tier) in the pandemic era.

Another odd thing was that one of our neighbors down the hall (possibly Sylvester Stallone, who was staying on site) had a bodyguard stationed outside their door whenever they were in their room, so that was a bit strange.

We'd consider staying there again, but on the whole, there are other properties and neighborhoods we like a bit better, so you're more likely to find us, in the future, at the Rosewood, Batty Langley's (which, I know, isn't "luxury"), or one of the Firmdale properties.

jbb

My wife is planning on extending a business stay in London for a few days and is looking for a hipper/trendier luxury hotel. Usually we stay in a place like the Beaumont or Stafford or a more traditional luxury property when we're together, but she prefers more funky places. I was thinking of one of the Firmdale properties (right now it seems Soho and Haymarket are the only ones open), but did anyone have any other suggestions? She prefers a more feminine but still bold design vibe and these seemed like the best options as many of the other boutique hotels seemed to have a more masculine design sense. I checked MrandMrsSmith for suggestions and Firmdale accounts for a lot of their London list.

sophialite

I believe the hamyard is also open

TGLoyalty

Stayed here for 3 nights in August and the lack of welcome/assistance from the doorman would sum up the general lack of attention from the staff throughout the stay.

On each occasion housekeeping would forget something such not replacing used glasses and on one occasion taking all the towels but then forgetting to replace them.

Wrong / missing items from the room service breakfast.

All fixed with one phone call but really why should I have to!

Have to say the food and service in Kerridges was impeccable and Were given a very nice large room overlooking the street but with very little street noise, which can often be a problem in London hotels. The breakfast in the restaurant had lots of high quality choices and lots attentive staff.

Incidentally spent my fourth night of this trip at GSY in the Sherlock Suite (booked guaranteed upgrade from King Premium on a Prive rate) and thought the fit and finish of the hotel was great. Yes it’s not the largest suite I’ve ever stayed in but I can’t say I was disappointed. I believe there is at least one on every floor rather than just one in the whole hotel.

The barman in the 40 elephants made some great off menu cocktails and the sibkin whisky bar looks like it could be a great spot for a late night drink when it finally opens.

m0hamed

This is quite surprising. May consider for 2022.

What's the rest of the property like? The townhouse looks quite spectacular.