Comfort Inn Heathrow, London

...also booked a hotel called Comfort Inn. We were quite shocked when we were dropped outside of Terminal 5, to then have to wait about 20 minutes for another bus to get to the hotel.

I myself was quite shocked to find that the trip took about 20 minutes to get to the Comfort Inn; I thought it would have been on the doorstep of Heathrow, but apparently I was very naive in this aspect. I truthfully thought that when we got to the airport, ...
...we were in, in the Comfort Inn.

I have looked at some other reviews on the hotel, and not many people have many bad things to say about the rooms or anything like that, I think that maybe they were having a problem during this time with their plumbing or something like that, I know we should have complained about it, but we had complained so much about their incompetence when it came to checking in that it would have been a little ... more

Here is the review:

When we decided to book our trip to New York for my 18th we knew the only way to really get to London, was by National Express. Only one of us drives and that person doesn’t feel safe on motorways. The National Express journey was terrible, but when we booked the package, we also booked a hotel called Comfort Inn. We were quite shocked when we were dropped outside of Terminal 5, to then have to wait about 20 minutes for another bus to get to the hotel.

I myself was quite shocked to find that the trip took about 20 minutes to get to the Comfort Inn; I thought it would have been on the doorstep of Heathrow, but apparently I was very naive in this aspect. I truthfully thought that when we got to the airport, we’d drag our suitcases around the corner and then ta da, we’ll be at the hotel. This is my own fault and because I was not the one that did the booking for the hotel (that was left to my mum and nan who booked everything for this trip) I assumed that they had looked at the location and it was in a good location. It has been brought to my attention that my opinion of the hotels location came across quite strongly within this review, and I would like to say that is not their fault at all, it is my innocence and naivety that made me quite shocked.

Shuttle Bus To and From The Hotel

This cost us I believe £8 per person to get to the hotel and to get back to Heathrow in the morning. Please don’t quote me on this, but I know it is a lot of money, and we were quite shocked at the price of it to be honest. The bus was nice though and we arrived outside our hotel in about 20 minutes which was very good, but it was a lot further than I expected from the hotel. Getting back was pretty easy, the bus arrived on good time, and however it was completely full this time and we had a lot of problems keeping our cases upright due to the driver’s extreme driving skills.

It did cost us £32 for 4 of us for the return tickets, which was quite a lot, but I think the trip was about 5 miles or so, and it was a nice journey.

Checking In

We had been moving since about 9 o’clock that morning, so when we arrived at the hotel; we wanted nothing more to sit down in our room and just collapse for a while. This was not to happen though, we all walked up to the desk and after 10 minutes of them messing around, I noticed that on the piece of paper in front of us, it only said 1 room for 2 of us. We asked where the other one was, as obviously there were two more people and they said we hadn’t booked it at all.

We then had to talk to someone on the phone who said we had never said anything about 4 people, as they had even had the recording of the phone call, however suddenly after about 20 minutes they changed their mind and said that they’ll give us a complimentary room, and gave us this room made for four people. It was very obvious that someone along the line had made a mistake, but not once did we hear an apology, we were still being blamed and they were the good guys for giving a free bed to two of us. Ridiculous really, as it was obvious that they had made the mistake, by the fact they suddenly changed their mind. This wasn’t what we wanted after such a long journey and it tainted our time there to begin with, we thought that the rest of the stay could only get better, how wrong we were.

The Room

We weren’t even shown to our room, we were told in very poor English the way to go, and we found the room about 5 minutes later. When we first walked in, we were shocked, the room seemed lovely. It was huge, very spacious; however we noticed one big problem. The room only had two single beds. We assumed that those beds would be made into doubles later, so we decided to leave it to later to ask what was going on. We found this to be quite annoying, as we were all shattered, what if we all wanted to get some rest right about then?

We sat down to have a coffee, and to freshen up. My family and I were sat on the beds watching the television when we suddenly heard this noise coming from the bathroom. My sister had just flushed the toilet, it wasn’t just a small noise, and it was a fog horn sounding noise which lasted for about 10 minutes. I think it was the toilet refilling again, but this noise was not good. We hoped that it was only that time, unfortunately it wasn’t, and this noise lasted for about 10 minutes every time we went to the loo. We could already see the problem during the night when we needed the toilet; we knew for sure that it would wake up all of us, if we flushed during the night. We decided not to flush when everyone was asleep; however the rest of the floor didn’t do that, so throughout the night, we were all woken up, by the other people on the floor flushing their toilet.

The website doesn’t really help me on what rooms they have available, so I’m really not able to talk about the other rooms available, but our room was a what is called a family room. It was quite a spacious room with the two beds, however when the third and fourth bed were constructed later from the two little chairs in the room the room suddenly shrunk a lot. They didn’t come and construct the extra rooms, until about 7pm, again what if we wanted to sleep after such a shattering day? The guy who came to construct the beds was unable to speak barely any English, I started to attempt a little bit of conversation about the fact that it was a little bit late and he replied with, I do not understand.

The room was very noisy, not only was the toilet very loud when you flushed it, but the whole room was very noisy. The bathroom emitted this loud rumbling noise, my bed was lined up against the bathroom wall, but it was so annoying all throughout the night. The air con was a very big annoyance as well, it was needed, it was one of the hottest days in the UK, and I was sleeping with these little throws over me, and was still way too hot. I gave up in the end, and turned on the air con and stuck in my headphones and still was kept awake by the rumbling noise from it. I actually thought nothing of it until we got to New York, when we were actually in the city that never sleeps, the noise emitted in New York was nothing compared to the room we were in, in the Comfort Inn.

I have looked at some other reviews on the hotel, and not many people have many bad things to say about the rooms or anything like that, I think that maybe they were having a problem during this time with their plumbing or something like that, I know we should have complained about it, but we had complained so much about their incompetence when it came to checking in that it would have been a little bit cruel to complain about something else.

There are apparently 184 comfortable bedrooms within the hotel, all have duvets and extra blankets. When I asked the guy who came to the room to construct the other two beds if I could have an extra sheet, as duvets were too hot for me in this heat, he looked at me like I had grown two heads, I gave up and had to sleep with two little throws they have at the bottom of the bed. Most un comfy make shift blanket ever.

Staff

When we got there, the people were quite rude and we noticed that none of them were English. I am not being racist at all, but I was surprised that quite a few of the people that we talked to, had trouble understanding us, including the people we talked to over the phone. When the person who directed us to our room, really struggled, we were quite amazed that they had been hired in the first place. They were very rude to us, not only did they not use any common sense to begin with, there was four of us standing in front of them, and in front of them on the screen it said the room was for 2 people only, but when we said that we had booked a family room for this price, they said we were wrong. What happened to the customer is always right and being nice to the customer?

After speaking to someone on the phone for about 30 minutes, they seemed to get even ruder when it seemed to go nowhere. Apparently there was a recording of us saying that the room was only for 2 people, well I can’t understand why we would just say for two people, especially when we booked with the National Express team, and there were four seats for us there. After a while, they decided to give in, but there was no apology for their mistake and it seems that we were stuck in the nosiest room possible out of spite.

The waitress during dinner was lovely; she even had a little giggle when she saw me look at my starter and only meal. She seemed to be one of the only polite ones there. The lady on the bar across the way however didn’t know what a latte was to save her life. She brought me a coffee, a very strong coffee with a little bit of foam on top. I went and said it wasn’t a latte, but could I have some warm milk to make it into more of a latte. She went to charge me for it, so I told her pretty much where she could put it and used the cold milk from my mum’s coffee. It’s not what you expect when you are spending so much on the latte, to not get what you paid for.

All in all, we were shocked that we didn’t have many staff there that understood what we were saying at all, which didn’t help when we had a problem with the checking in section. We were also amazed that we never got an apology for their mistake and no help at all with our bags or anything like that. Overall, we found most of the staff quite rude and we wouldn’t stay here again, mainly because of that.

Seasons Brasserie

I have worked in quite a few restaurants and cafes over the years and thought I had seen extortionate prices over the years, until I came to the Comfort Inn Heathrow, and found them charging £5 for two meat skewers which were the size of my little finger, and £10 for a greasy omelette. The restaurant is lovely though and the waitresses were very polite, probably the only ones in the whole hotel, however the prices were just awful for the terrible pieces of food they delivered in front of us. When I saw the price of the starter, I assumed that I would get about 4/5 lamb skewers, not two. I was shocked to say the least and really wished I had ordered something a bit different.

The meal came to about £40 for 1 starter and 3 main meals. I don’t think I’ve ever been charged that much before in my life. I know we were in London, but those prices were just so expensive and I know it doesn’t cost them anything near the prices they charge for them to make something like that. I wasn’t very happy at all after this, we arrived at the airport the next day with our stomachs rumbling, I hate eating breakfast before 9am or so, but at 6am you saw my dining out on a cake from Costa Coffee at a reasonable price.

Seasons Bar and Coffee

The apparently serve Costa Coffee here, I’m sure it is the technically Costa Coffee, but I was given a latte in the style of a coffee with a little bit of milk in it and a bit of foam. My mum had a coffee for about £2.20 or something and it arrived in what looked sort of like a shot glass, and my sisters coke was in a very, very small glass. Very extortionate prices even here, and the woman behind the bar, didn’t know what a latte was apparently and barely understood me when I went back up asking for some warm milk to make my ‘coffee’ into a latte.

Internet Access

There is internet access in the hotel, but you are going to be charged quite a bit to have it in your room. I think if I remember rightly it was nearing a fiver for one night. You can have 30 minute access on the computers downstairs, but then you will be charged a lot of money just for that. I am not too bothered as we were only there for a day, but it was a lot of money just to go and check our emails.

Price

None of us can remember now how much the rooms were I’m afraid, however I’ve filled in a fake form on the internet and these are the prices they have brought up. I have chosen a random date in the middle of January for one night and the rooms are for 2 people. The prices are:

Standard Double room Only: £49
Standard Twin room Only : £49
Superior Double Room Only: £59
Family Room Only : £59

The prices are pretty good in my mind; as long as you get a decent room then I’m sure you will like it. If you get annoyed with incompetent staff then I wouldn’t come here, the cheap price is not even good enough. You have to remember they will find other ways to get money out of you via the bar and the restaurant or will tell you, you might have to pay more money because you haven’t booked a family room.

Location

Comfort Hotel Heathrow
Shepiston Lane, Hayes
Middlesex, UB3 1LP

As I did none of the booking for the hotel I had no idea where we were going to go, I naively thought that we would be on the doorstep of the airport, but obviously not. The area wasn’t really what I was expecting, across the road from the hotel was this grassy area, which we decided to go and explore, hoping we’d find a park or something to sit down and relax for a bit on. We did not find this, and didn’t last long in the area due to some sceptical looking lads walking around where we were sat.

I think if we had driven to the location, I would have gotten a little lost. It is in the middle of nowhere, however this is our own fault for not checking the location before booking, and I can’t lower the rate of the hotel because of the location at all.

The Good

Okay, I think the only good place about this place is the price; it is very cheap to stay in, however you are expected to pay the rest if you want to drink or eat anything whilst you are there. The room is very spacious; there is no doubt about that, however it is completely out shadowed by the rest of the things that we witnessed within the hotel.

The Bad

Everything else was pretty much bad, we found some very rude staff there and the noises in the room were just way too much for me to even think about sleeping. The fog horn sound that came out of the toilet was quite shocking, and it wouldn’t have been too bad if it had only lasted about a minute, it lasted about 5-10 minutes. The noises within the room were stupidly loud and did keep me up most of the night, it’s not what you expect, and especially considering it was noisier than the room in New York.

The prices of the food was just amazing, I really was shocked when I had such a small portion for a fiver, and the meals the rest of my family had looked awful and were very, very expensive.

Final Opinion

There were way too many problems with this hotel, I’m not sure if the problems were just in that room, but we would have been fine if that was the only problem, but the staff was so rude about everything, that we gave up in the end. It was even noisier in our hotel than it was in our hotel in New York and that’s saying something. The toilet couldn’t be flushed without waking every one up and it was about 1.30am before I even was able to think about going to sleep.

Would I recommend this hotel? No, definitely not. The staff were awful, and you really don’t expect to be held up for 45 minutes for them to deal with their mistake before you can go to your room. They didn’t understand what we were saying half the time, and it was the same thing for us as well, we struggled to understand a lot of what they were saying as well.

There was no apology for their mistakes at all, and we were almost blamed for the problems, I don’t know whatever happened to the saying the customer is always right with that place, but they don’t seem to follow it at all. I can see it being a lovely little hotel, if they hired good, polite staff and if they got the noises in the rooms sorted out. A lot of people use that hotel before they go off on a flight, so a lot of people need a good nights sleep and I was not able to do this at this hotel at all. I would not recommend this hotel at all, and will not be staying here again if I even need to stay in a hotel before going on a flight.

Hope you liked this review.

(C) Kirsty 2009

 

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