W Leicester Square, London, United Kingdom [Master Thread]
Check in was quick, had to wait a bit for my room but I did arrive early.
The marvelous suite (used 5 SNA's) is a really great space. The WC is huge and the bedroom also quite large with a great desk and sitting area. Although it is bright outside the heavy curtains do their job in creating almost an entire blackout. I am on the 4th floor so can hear some bleedthrough of subwoofers but not loud enough that it bothers me at all or prevents sleep (if you are sensitive to this you would want to go with a higher floor).
Staff have been universally friendly and always have a smile and a greeting. Location is great for walking and close to the tube. Platinum breakfast is a very nice continental spread plus one hot item from the menu.
If if you like the area and like the W concept I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this hotel.
W London Leicester Square
10 Wardour Street London, GB W1D 6QF
Not recommended (2 Photos)
W London Leicester Square
To paraphrase Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd, is the W the worst hotel in London? Probably not, because hotels in London can get very, very bad. But for the price, the W is still pretty bad.
And I don't have a lot of room to complain, because I already knew this from reading the nearly universally negative FT reviews. And yet I still chose to stay here, in part because SNAs cleared and in part because I prefer a more modern hotel design than most of the London hotel market offers, and I've never tried the W and have long been curious so decided to bite the bullet. At least now I know for myself that (but for some sort of exceptionally good cash or points rate, anyway) I won't be returning.
As for where I'll go instead, personally I'm a big fan of the Great Northern, and while its rooms are small, you can book the upgraded room categories there for a very reasonable premium in SPG points (and fewer total points per night than the standard room at the W costs, at least at current hotel categories). It doesn't get you as much space as SNAs successfully used as the W would, but I think it probably results in a better experience overall. If my SNAs hadn't cleared at the W that's what I would have done instead. The Sheraton Park Lane is also nice now that it's been renovated, but rates, both in cash and in points, have gone up commensurately.
Location
Leicester Square, along with the nearby Picadilly Circus, comprise "London's Times Square" for lack of a better description, in terms of crowds, American chain restaurants, buskers, tourist traps, and world-class theatre. The W is about the best location you'll find if you want to be right in the heart of that, though whether you do is the more important question.
Access from Heathrow Airport is easy enough on the Picadilly line if you want to economize, but you will have to carry your luggage up a few flights of stairs at either of the nearby stations, Picadilly Circus or Leicester Square. (My other London SPG favorites, the Great Northern and Sheraton Grand Park Lane, are both also on the Picadilly line and offer full escalator and elevator access from platform to street at their respective stations.) By car at off-peak hours an UberX can be cheap, but check traffic first as it can also take much, much longer at busy times. The area around the hotel is a maze of one-way, dead-end, and pedestrian-only streets, so you can also get stuck in traffic snarls easily.
Room
I used SNAs to upgrade to the Marvelous Suite, and I understand the standard rooms are tiny and completely non-functional, so the Marvelous Suite had the advantage of being larger. That is about where my positive comments about the room end.
Oh, and one other positive comment, maybe the suite is better than the standard rooms in this regard but someone else commented that the lights were confusing. I did not find this to be the case -- the suite has a set of master light buttons labeled 1-5 in a few different places including by the bed, where 1 is all lights on, 5 is all lights off, and the others are various intermediate stages. A bit more labeling would have been helpful, but the lighting was otherwise intuitive and easy to operate. The air conditioning was also powerful, maybe even a bit too powerful, but in London the risk of wan AC is high so I'll take it.
On the negative side, we will need bullets:
- The suite layout is odd. You enter through a small hallway which then opens into the large bathroom first, and from there you go through another door into the bedroom. The total combination is definitely a generous amount of space for London, but it's not really a suite -- there is no separate living room. Many Ws this would probably call this exact room a Cool Corner Room rather than a suite. That said, the standard rooms here are reputed to be bad enough that if you are going to stay here anyway, it may still be worth the SNAs to upgrade. (Like many W suites it's not a great setup if you happen to be traveling with a non-romantic companion with whom you don't mind sharing a king bed in order to get the extra space of a suite but from whom you want some bathroom privacy -- but since the shower door closes fully and is opaque, it's actually relatively workable, as long as neither of you wants to take a bath while the other one might want to enter or leave the suite.)
- There is a small sitting area in the bedroom, but the sofa is as comfortable as if you stacked up a bunch of phone books and covered them in low-quality velvet. There is also a real desk and chair in the bedroom, which I understand the standard rooms don't have.
- The bed was fine but definitely not as comfortable nor as plush as beds I'm used to at other Ws.
- In the UK, you are not allowed to have any regular power plugs in the bathroom -- which gets tricky in a bathroom as large as this one. Most hotels will offer a special lower-voltage shaver power plug in the bathroom, but there was not one here as far as I could find. And most hotels will compensate for the lack of plugs in the bathroom by having an obvious place to use a blow dryer in the bedroom -- the Great Northern has a large miror with plug halfway up the side right outside the bathroom, for example. Here, not only was there no conveniently located plug, but in a very un-W-like move, there were also few mirrors in the bedroom at all. Very poorly thought out.
- There are also lots of USB power ports situated around the room, about half of which worked.
- Other design features in the bathroom included locating the tissue box inches off the ground on the lowest of a series of awkward shelves under the sink, but I'm sure ground-level tissues are some sort of English tradition I just don't appreciate as a crass American. The WC has motion sensor-triggered lighting, which is great at night. The shower was okay, but the rainfall showerhead water pressure was weak, the door opened in a way that made it hard to have a towel placed outside, and the shower leaked across the floor regardless.
- The refrigerator is one of those auto-charge minibar things without any room whatsoever to squeeze in any of one's own items, which I hate at all hotels as a matter of principle. (This particular one was also set up so that the small bottle of Champagne was in a spring-loaded slot right in front of the small bottle of white wine, so I'm not sure if it was even possible to get the white wine without paying for the Champagne.) At current exchange rates if paying in dollars, the minibar prices were ... not as unreasonable as you might imagine for a W in the center of London.
- The suite did have a Nespresso machine. That's actually a positive comment, but this list had gotten so long I got carried away with it.
- And then there was the noise. This will need sub-bullets:
- The suite overlooked Leicester Square, and when we first got into the room it was Saturday afternoon and the square was busy with tourists, buskers, street performers, and so forth. You could hear it all in the room as if the windows were open ... and I quickly discovered that one of the windows had a very poor seal such that I was able to stuff towels behind the side of the window, which helped only a tiny amount with the noise.
- (There isn't really any reason for the windows in this hotel to be openable at all, which would help with the noise regardless -- they tip open slightly, but then there is another separate glass shield that encases the building about a half-meter out, so you can't even really get any fresh air flowing into the room. And the AC is powerful. So just make the windows not open.)
- But then, the second night I noticed that the room was much quieter and the gap behind the window was gone -- so I'm not sure if the window just wasn't closed correctly (I tried opening and closing it a few times the first night), or if housekeeping noticed my stuffed towels and called maintenance to fix the window. Either way, once the window was closed properly you could barely hear the street noise outside, which was a big improvement.
- BUT THEN, upon waking up on Monday morning there was a bunch of banging and construction-like noises starting as early as 6 or 7am. There was a construction site across the street, but it sounded like the noise was coming from inside the hotel. Our room on the southeast side of the 4th floor was right above where I believe the currently-under-renovation nightclub space is, so I'm not sure if that was causing the noise? If so, they really shouldn't have been starting so early, and it does not bode well for how much noise would leak from the nightclub into this room once the nightclub reopens.
Platinum Breakfast
The hotel has a surprisingly good platinum breakfast offering, which was probably the best thing about it in my experience.
You have the choice between room service breakfast and breakfast in the restaurant (Burger and Lobster) downstairs, but you have to choose one or the other for the duration of your stay. Room service is avaialble until 11:00 while the restaurant is available only until 10:30, and room service includes a hot dish while the restaurant is only a set continental menu, so it seems to me that the room service option easily dominates, but maybe I am missing something.
The room service option is handled by giving you a set of door hangers, one for each day of your stay, that you put out the night before with your options selected. The offering is quite generous, including each of a hot and cold beverage, toast or pastries, a fruit dish, and a hot main dish for up to 2 people per room. (There isn't a totally obvious convention for setting up 2 separate orders on the same card, but I included some notes where needed and it all worked out.) Ordering all of the same stuff from the regular room service menu would run around £30 per person.
Everything is delivered with a £0 total bill to sign that includes a line for a gratuity -- not sure what would be expected there but I left £5 each day since presumably the included service charge on a regular room service delivery of this amount is at least that much.
(The Great Northern has arguably a better platinum breakfast treatment since you can pretty much order anything from their restaurant menu, but there is definitely something to be said for the convenience and time savings of having breakfast from room service.)
The options as of my stay were:
The W Leicester Square was one of my worse stays ever in a Starwood.
The W Leicester Square was one of my worse stays ever in a Starwood.
Due to work I'm going to be in London for work on Thursday - Sunday for a couple weeks a month till April 2018 and debating between W and Le Meridien. As the reviews have highlighted:
1. Small rooms with typical Platinum upgrades not being a Suite
2. Room issues and noise complaints
3. Questionably rude/not undesrstanding staff
4. No clear recognition of Platinum status
But since my stay is mostly going to be outside of business travel, just wondering if my recognition would be slightly different?
Due to work I'm going to be in London for work on Thursday - Sunday for a couple weeks a month till April 2018 and debating between W and Le Meridien. As the reviews have highlighted:
1. Small rooms with typical Platinum upgrades not being a Suite
2. Room issues and noise complaints
3. Questionably rude/not undesrstanding staff
4. No clear recognition of Platinum status
But since my stay is mostly going to be outside of business travel, just wondering if my recognition would be slightly different?
But since my stay is mostly going to be outside of business travel, just wondering if my recognition would be slightly different?
Also a lot of people use SNA's when staying at a weekend at this hotel to get out of the small rooms and bear in mind the Wonderful / Sepctacular & Fabulous rooms are all the same size just a higher floor / different view so if SNA's use up the suites they give to Plats then your chance of an upgrade to an actual bigger room are slim!
Generally I think the staff at the W are great and if you are going Thurs-Sunday with the idea to party and enjoy the atmosphere and not use the room much then it isnt a bad option, but I think chances of upgrade are better at Le Meridien and you also have a lounge there where you can relax if you want to outside of the room whereas the bar are at W once open I would imagine will be very busy and noisy, which if thats what you want then great but if its more a work trip and you want a bit more peaceful surroundings it wouldnt be the place for you!
Also a lot of people use SNA's when staying at a weekend at this hotel to get out of the small rooms and bear in mind the Wonderful / Sepctacular & Fabulous rooms are all the same size just a higher floor / different view so if SNA's use up the suites they give to Plats then your chance of an upgrade to an actual bigger room are slim!
Generally I think the staff at the W are great and if you are going Thurs-Sunday with the idea to party and enjoy the atmosphere and not use the room much then it isnt a bad option, but I think chances of upgrade are better at Le Meridien and you also have a lounge there where you can relax if you want to outside of the room whereas the bar are at W once open I would imagine will be very busy and noisy, which if thats what you want then great but if its more a work trip and you want a bit more peaceful surroundings it wouldnt be the place for you!
It's good to know that people use their SNA's for the weekend stay and if that is the case I will have to consider either the LM or Westbury.
Thanks for the info and the update
Due to work I'm going to be in London for work on Thursday - Sunday for a couple weeks a month till April 2018 and debating between W and Le Meridien. As the reviews have highlighted:
1. Small rooms with typical Platinum upgrades not being a Suite
2. Room issues and noise complaints
3. Questionably rude/not undesrstanding staff
4. No clear recognition of Platinum status
But since my stay is mostly going to be outside of business travel, just wondering if my recognition would be slightly different?
The only thing I'd caution you on if noise is an issue is avoid any rooms on the same floor as the terrace they host private parties late at night that can get quite rowdy.
It's good to know that people use their SNA's for the weekend stay and if that is the case I will have to consider either the LM or Westbury.
Thanks for the info and the update
I think if you stay above 3, you won't hear the lounge, which is a hopping place and a partial reason to stay here.
It's not a high rise hotel, so there is noise from the street. Not terrible, I'm but you're in a hot area and it's a city. Ask for high floor room (maybe 6th or 7th?).
The Platinum recognition is genuine and we were upgraded to a suite. Perhaps it was lackluster at the beginning, but there seemed fully aware of the program. I am sure they have many more requests that they can accommodate, but they fully understand the SPG program and are not anal about suite upgrades.
There were numerous flagrant staff and technology issues which seriously negatively affected our stay when we were there two years ago. Pretty unbelievable, IMO, about the worst combination of non-functioning technical/room issues and problems and plus staff behavior I have EVER encountered (5 night stay), including a drunk bartender saying "f---ing boyfriend" to me and my girlfriend when I showed up a few mins after she was there alone; then refusing to serve us at just before closing time, only to be "rescued" by the other bartender who apologized for him. But it was an appalling and insulting experience.
Upon our return, when I emailed the GM TWICE over 3-6 months upon about this series of events (including no phone working in two different rooms (but not throughout the hotel), major TV and other tech problems, the GM NEVER responded, which is probably among the worst offenses in my book, and perhaps reflects on the core of the hotel's issues (for Plats or reg. guests).
I can't imagine a GM not responding to an email describing experiences like this (the GM was on vacation during this week -- Christmas week).
Overall, I love the hotel, esp. it's vibe and location. The breakfasts are also extremely good.
It's good to know that people use their SNA's for the weekend stay and if that is the case I will have to consider either the LM or Westbury.
Thanks for the info and the update
Apart from the actual reception the entire First floor is closed currently being refurbished however, so the bar is essentially the meeting rooms on the second floor, so not very W currently. This is ongoing until the end of October I believe, then the refurbished bar area will open!
On a side note currently at the Sheraton Park Lane and for a hotel to relax and work on with its lounge and also the refurbished rooms it blows the W and the Le Meridien away and treats Plats pretty well! Only slight issue is the breakfast. Anyway I am getting off topic as this was W or LeMeridien!
Apart from the actual reception the entire First floor is closed currently being refurbished however, so the bar is essentially the meeting rooms on the second floor, so not very W currently. This is ongoing until the end of October I believe, then the refurbished bar area will open!
On a side note currently at the Sheraton Park Lane and for a hotel to relax and work on with its lounge and also the refurbished rooms it blows the W and the Le Meridien away and treats Plats pretty well! Only slight issue is the breakfast. Anyway I am getting off topic as this was W or LeMeridien!
I think if you stay above 3, you won't hear the lounge, which is a hopping place and a partial reason to stay here.
It's not a high rise hotel, so there is noise from the street. Not terrible, I'm but you're in a hot area and it's a city. Ask for high floor room (maybe 6th or 7th?).
The Platinum recognition is genuine and we were upgraded to a suite. Perhaps it was lackluster at the beginning, but there seemed fully aware of the program. I am sure they have many more requests that they can accommodate, but they fully understand the SPG program and are not anal about suite upgrades.
There were numerous flagrant staff and technology issues which seriously negatively affected our stay when we were there two years ago. Pretty unbelievable, IMO, about the worst combination of non-functioning technical/room issues and problems and plus staff behavior I have EVER encountered (5 night stay), including a drunk bartender saying "f---ing boyfriend" to me and my girlfriend when I showed up a few mins after she was there alone; then refusing to serve us at just before closing time, only to be "rescued" by the other bartender who apologized for him. But it was an appalling and insulting experience.
Upon our return, when I emailed the GM TWICE over 3-6 months upon about this series of events (including no phone working in two different rooms (but not throughout the hotel), major TV and other tech problems, the GM NEVER responded, which is probably among the worst offenses in my book, and perhaps reflects on the core of the hotel's issues (for Plats or reg. guests).
I can't imagine a GM not responding to an email describing experiences like this (the GM was on vacation during this week -- Christmas week).
Overall, I love the hotel, esp. it's vibe and location. The breakfasts are also extremely good.
The only thing I'd caution you on if noise is an issue is avoid any rooms on the same floor as the terrace they host private parties late at night that can get quite rowdy.