Thistle London Heathrow, West Drayton

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Close to airport and shuttle bus runs frequently
Disadvantages:	Bad service, dated rooms

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I've stayed at this hotel as I attended an event held in the conference centre.

Parking was difficult, mainly because this hotel offers a park and stay facility for Heathrow Airport and after driving around each area of the car park we ended up parking at the side of the exit road. It was good job that we stayed on site for the time we were there as I wouldn't have fancied my chances at parking up again if we left and came back.

When we checked in we were told that a pre-authorisation charge would be put on the account until we checked out. This is fair enough, obviously they don't want people charging items to their room and not paying, but our pre-authorisation charge was £400 - nearly three times what our total bill would be. Personally I thought this was excessive.

The hotel has two floors and what appears to be very long, dark corridors if your room is in the 200 numbers, which ours was. It had old, mahogany furniture that had clearly seen better days as it was chipped and stained. The heater didn't work and looked like it hadn't worked in a good while.

The bathroom was terrible with an old mouldy shower curtain and dirty tiles which were chipped and broken.

I don't think anyone had stayed in this particular room for some time and I can see why. Everyone else probably did what we did, complained at reception and got moved.

The second room we had was slightly better, still worn out and in need of updating, but it didn't look like a throwback to the seventies and the bathroom seemed habitable.

As we were tired we decided to have room service, but after ringing for ages I had a confused person on the other end of the phone who said that room service was closed. Since it was advertised as "24 hour room service" I wasn't very impressed. In the end we walked to the McDonalds up the road and ate there, probably for a lot cheaper too.

There is an Oak and Avocado cafe where you can get a range of meals where we ate one night but I felt it was expensive given the quality of food. I think I paid £13 for a Caesar Salad with a freezing cold chicken breast dropped on top.

I would say that one good thing about this hotel is the breakfast. It is buffet style but you can get the full English with toast, cereal, fruit, pastries and other cold items. Fruit juice, tea, coffee and water is available too.

To be honest it was a relief when we checked out of the hotel, although I did get a pleasant surprise when the parking charge was waived. It's convenient for the airport, and the 'Heathrow Hoppa' runs quite frequently and drops off at every terminal. You are quite close the runways at this hotel and outside it can get quite noisy, although you can't really hear the planes when inside your room.

The staff at this hotel on whole were polite but seemed disinterested and it seemed to be an ordeal when we complained about the standard of the room.

I've read on other review sites that this hotel has recently undergone updating work and the rooms are much better. Perhaps this is now the case, but I don't think I'll be staying at a Thistle hotel again.