We went to London for a long weekend to visit a film festival at Leicester Square. I have stayed in other Malmaison’s before and found them to be very comfortable. There were some good rates for the bank holiday weekend so we decided to try the one in London. They have 12 hotels situated around the country including properties in Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham.

Malmaison London is situated in Charterhouse Square in the centre of London. The nearest tube station is Barbican and is within walking distance of St Paul’s, the River Thames and Oxford street. In order to get to Leicester square you have to change tube lines, but on several days we walked which only took about 20 minutes.

Booking:

Booking a room at Malmaison is very easy. It can be done online at www.malmaison.com, where there are pictures of the rooms available and it clearly gives information on the deals included. Or they have a central reservations desk which you can call to make a booking at any of their hotels. We chose a rate that just included breakfast but there are also dinner bed and breakfast rates or a deal called Love Suite Love which involves champagne and chocolates for a romantic weekend away.

Check In:

Checking in was very easy and we were handed the key within about five minutes of signing the registration card and swiping the credit card. The room was on the first floor and was easy to find. In the lift it tells you which rooms are on which floors, although the room numbers also correspond to the floor.

The Room:

The room was really nice and a good size for two people. It had a king size bed, a large desk, a flat screen plasma TV and a really large wardrobe. There was air conditioning in the room which had been on all day so the room was quite cold when we first arrived. It warmed up quickly though once this had been turned off.

The room had everything you could possibly need for a few nights away. In the wardrobe there was tea and coffee facilities which are complimentary with a good selection of teas and there is decaffeinated coffee as well. There is also an iron and ironing board, a hairdryer and a safe. The hotel also provides a dry cleaning service where you put your clothes in the bag left in the wardrobe, leave it at reception and it is returned to your room on the same afternoon. This is very useful for business customers who cold be staying for a week at a time.

There was also a mini bar in the room which is charged as extra and can be quite extortionate but it was well stocked with items such as coke, water, apple juice, red bull, nuts and crisps. It is an honesty mini bar so you have to declare the items you had on check out, but they do go round and check as well when the rooms area cleaned!

The Bathroom:

The bathroom was also a good size and had both a bath and a shower over the bath. There were plenty of mirrors in the bathroom and lots of lighting which always helps when you are trying to put make up on. There was also plenty of places to put toiletries. I love the Malmaison chain because they give you products in the bathroom which you can take away with you. We got a shower gel/hair wash, some conditioner and a bar of soap, but other products include body lotion and breath freshener depending on the room type booked. You tend to get more products if you book a suite. These smell gorgeous and are of a high quality as well.

The bath didn’t look very big from the outside and was in a sort of alcove with a red and black curtain which doubled up as a shower curtain. But when I got in the bath it was really deep and I could really stretch out and relax, which is what is needed from a bath. The shower was nice and powerful as well. What I really liked was that there was a rubber bath mat provided to stop you slipping in the bath and a towelling bath mat for the floor, which not all hotel chains give you.

I felt there were a few things missing from the room which could have been added. There were no dressing gowns, which I know I have had previously in other Malmaisons. There was also no DVD player which was disappointing. The other two Malmaisons that I have stayed in had DVD players and even a selection of DVD’s at reception that you can borrow to watch. There also didn’t seem to be any hotel wireless. They had the plug and play cables in the desk which did work, but there was no wireless signal. It didn’t matter too much for us but for business men who wanted to do work and sit on the bed, it would have been a problem.

There also wasn’t a vast selection of TV channels. Most of them seemed to be sports channels, which didn’t really interest us. There was one music channel and then a few called ‘Hotel Radio’.

Room Service:

On the first night we arrived fairly late and decided to have room service. We both ordered a ‘Mal Burger’ which is quite famous and talked about among those who had visited before. I actually had one in Oxford before and didn’t think much of it, but there wasn’t much else on the menu so we gave it a go. It was really nice. We could chose how we had the burgers cooked and chose medium. This really brought out the flavour and the meat was so large it was like eating half a cow. It came with a side order of relish and extra salad, even though there was plenty in the burger. There were also shoe string chips which were so thinly cut. They were nice but were hard to eat and didn’t have much substance to them.

The only down side was that they add both a tray charge of £4.00 onto each room service bill and there is a 10% service charge as well which makes it quite costly. There is a spacious restaurant which serves food until about 9.30 pm so if you wanted to avoid the tray charge then you can book a table in the restaurant.

Breakfast:

Breakfast is served each morning between 7 – 10 Monday – Friday and 8 – 11 on a
Saturday and Sunday. There are two options – the first is a continental breakfast charged at £14.95. This includes a buffet table in which you can help yourself to cereals, juices, pastries, fruit and yoghurts.

The other option is the cooked breakfast which is £17.95 and also includes the selection from the continental buffet. There are plenty of things to chose from including porridge, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, eggs Benedict and the good old full English.

The prices in London are slightly higher, in the other hotels the continental is normally about £10 and the cooked £15.

I found breakfast to be quite disappointing on all four mornings that we had it, all for different reasons. I can’t eat eggs and all the cooked dishes have eggs in them. When I asked for the eggs to be taken away the portions ended up really small and didn’t fill me up. Also, on several mornings the continental buffet wasn’t too well stocked. I am glad it was included in the rate because otherwise I would have refused to pay.

Conclusion:

Overall I enjoyed our stay at Malmaison London and would definitely visit again. It was clean and comfortable and an unfussy luxury. The staff were really friendly and helpful and nothing is too much trouble. There is also a gym at the hotel which we didn’t have time to use, and there are also meeting rooms for businesses, but again these weren’t used so can’t comment.