Britannia International Hotel, London > Reviews > Poor service, tacky interior, otherwise OK...

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money	Average
Quality of Rooms	Average
Standard of Service	Terrible
Quality of Food & Drink	Poor
Cleanliness	Average

Advantages:	Convenient location for Canary Wharf visitors
Disadvantages:	Poor service, bizarre interior styling

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I've staid at the Britannia for more than 50 nights over the past few years. The one thing I learned from this is that, actually, the other reviewers of this hotel were not having bad luck. The hotel is spectacularly tacky (think what would happen if you give a big interior design budget to East Enders' Peggy Mitchell) and service is consistently worse than any similarly-priced London hotel.

The rooms themselves are quite OK, if you don't mind the 80s interior - enough space, clean, silent, etc.

However, what makes this hotel truly unique is not the interior design but the blend of 'don't care/whatever' attitude of staff and the fact that their booking system is based on chaos theory. It is very common to spend 10-15 minutes (which is long, in real time) waiting to check in. You have a 15% chance of your booking not being found (which is a big risk, in real life) and a near-100% chance of seeing some other guests being driven to desperation because they hit the 15% jackpot (which is amusing)...

Why do I come back? Because my business meetings are very near by, and because by now, I enjoy it.

Staying here is a unique immersion in bad taste, and as long as you know their service issues and you make it past reception, the rooms are actually OK. Oh - and to truly experience the "faux chic 80s East End" effect, do have dinner there as well? You'd be missing out otherwise.