Ambassadors Hotel

It was my first time visiting London and hotel was booked via a vacation package with Gate 1. I am completely disappointed with Gate 1 for considering this hotel a 3 star. We checked in and room was ready which was expected to be small but when we saw a fan I immediately called reception and asked if they had any rooms with AC, they informed that they did but that would be an additional 30 pounds a day. CRAZY! If you can try to avoid Wi-​fi please do. It’s 5 pounds for 24 hours but the wifi is slow and every time you leave the room you have to keep re logging in. The pros on this hotel is that you are two blocks from the tube and there is pub that was worth every penny. The blackbird pub. Must try it out. Would I come back? Maybe to the location but not to the hotel.

We were booked here as a part of a vacation package through Gate1Travel in the USA. As budget conscious travelers, we opted for more spartan accommodations. After reading a lot of reviews online after I had booked this trip I was a bit concerned by the poor reviews.
We were booked in to a room on 4^th floor. The room was small. It took a lot of effort to try to get all of our luggage stored. The location is safe, and well located for quick access to Earl’s Court Underground station, restaurants and shops. This was one of two stops on our European vacation that required payment for internet access. Breakfast here was pretty basic consisting of cereals, toast and rolls.
We spent most of our time in London elsewhere exploring the city and not in the hotel. We found the Ambassadors to be a safe, clean and functional place to lay our heads. Bedding consisted of one pillow per person, sheet and blanket. There were some problems with adequate ventilation particularly after showering and the bathrooms showed some damage and wear.
If you’re from the States, I would compare this to a Super 8 or Days Inn equivalent with some significant wear in actual guest quarters. The staff was friendly and the common spaces were modern, clean and well maintained. This place is basic, and safe with a good location. Room size was some what of a problem. If you are on a budget and keep your expectations on par with what you are spending, you’ll have a well located space to sleep and clean up in during your visit to London.

Meh pretty much sums this place up. Our shower curtain wouldn’t even cover the entire shower, so no matter what angle I attempted to shower at, I’d end up spilling a litre of water on the bathroom floor. Also, the roof slanted, so I had to crouch in half of the shower (I’m only 5’11″, someone taller will have to crouch the whole time).
Bought 1 hour internet time, and the wifi shut down halfway through my use. Called reception and they said «wait 10 minutes, keep trying, and if it’s still not working we’ll send someone up.» Waited the 10 minutes, still wasn’t working, waited for someone to come upstairs. He fiddled with it for another 10 minutes, said I’d just have to use the downstairs wifi. Perturbed, because I wanted to have a Skype call and liked the privacy of my room, I walked downstairs and logged in again seeing only 10 minutes remaining. I let them know that 20 minutes of my usage disappeared into thin air, and they just shrugged and said there’s nothing they can do about it. What. The. Fuck. Not cool. I don’t even blame the guys that were working — I blame management for not having a way to exchange that.
The only saving grace of this hotel is that I’m fairly certain there are shittier places around. For the price, you get what you pay for, but there are lots of things that could easily be fixed that are just ignored.

The reviews warn of basic which isn’t a problem for my boyfriend and me, as we most often stay at hostels or camp and, man, do we wish that we had done the same for our weekend in London.
We arrive to a tight, overheated room (yes, we did let the staff know that the room was exceptionally warm) with no working television, but we didn’t care. We consider our troubles to have begun the next morning, when we woke up early to see a little more of the town and then catch our flight out. Instead, my clothing was soaked and stained from the radiator busting overnight. I called down to ask what can they do, can they clean my pants, I was only traveling with one pair. No, they said they could do nothing. They didn’t even show concern for the water in the room. A hour and half later, I gave up on trying to try the pants with a hair dryer (as it had stopped working) and left the room in thermals. I went down to speak to the front desk while my boyfriend was still in the room.
The ladies at the front desk all told me they could do nothing. I asked for their manager and waited almost an hour for him (during this time my boyfriend had joined me and was trying to calm me down as we both watched the manager in the other room sitting down, seemingly unoccupied). The manager’s first words to me were, «What are you doing to flood the room». It didn’t get any better from there. During the time that I waited, the manager had sent personnel into the room (keep in mind, I had reported the problem hours prior and they hadn’t sent anyone and at the time they did send someone, we had still not checked out and we weren’t notified that someone would be entering the room). Despite having already sent someone (again, unbeknownst to my boyfriend and me), he asked that he be shown the damage in the room in addition to the damaged clothing I was already displaying to him (another stall tactic). He acknowledged that the radiator burst but took no responsibility for the damage it caused. What’s worse is that he said that there was nothing he could do about it. When I directly asked that we not be charged for the room, he laughed at me and said, «You are joking». I asked him why we were made to wait for over an hour on his decision if he had no power to correct the problem. He then gave an e-​mail address, no name, of someone who could be contacted for resolve. As you can image, his statements all came across as rude and disrespectful, with no apology or acceptance of responsibility. We lost 3 hours of our time in London and I caught a cold, presumably from walking around, in the cold, in long-​underwear (carrying my wet pants).
A week later, I haven’t received a response to the polite, professional e-​mail my boyfriend sent to the given address, but I pledge to update this post should there be a reply (but I think we all know that an email address is a brush off).
While I waited in the lobby, I heard one customer complain about the nature of the food and the hotel receptionist respond that that wasn’t their fault because they had order food from an outside restaurant since their hotel was under renovations. Three other hotel guests were appalled they were asked to pay 15 pounds to hold their, in total, 3 small bags for the day. During a common check out time, not one customer had anything nice to say about their stay which let me know that our incident was not an unfortunate coincidence but the result of bad management of a subpar hotel.

The bad: the rooms are poorly designed (who needs a giant desk in a small hotel room?), and the bathrooms are worse (I stayed here for the better part of a week and was unable to come up with a way to keep the water from the shower from getting all over the floor). Also, they have an internet terminal in the lobby but guests have to pay to use it (there’s an internet café around the corner on Cromwell Road that’s a better option).
The good: close to the District, Piccadilly and Circle lines, as well as plenty of other tourist attractions. Much more affordable than other hotels in the neighborhood.
In conclusion: It’s cheap, and you get what you pay for.