The hotel OneSixTwo in Westcombe Hill, Greenwich, is advertised as a “boutique hotel”, which to me gives the impression of a fashionable, cosy, and a delightfully intimate alternative to the large impersonal hotel chains; but I think in this case it means small, mean, and short on facilities. Our one-night stay after attending the ballet at the O2 Arena, a very convenient 15 minutes away by the 108 or 472 bus, was booked through laterooms.com and cost £79 for a double plus continental breakfast, not a bad deal for a popular tourist area in London, and benefitted from reasonable reviews from the recent customers. We were however quite disappointed, and for our particular room would not recommend this hotel.
First, the plus points: our room, Number 4, was very quiet and pleasantly warm, and the bed was very comfortable, with a good quality mattress and pillows. The en-suite was adequate with a reasonable size shower, and featured a very modern glass wash basin with single-pillar chrome taps. The continental breakfast included cold meats and cheese slices, plenty of cereals, toast, etc., and we were looked after by a very attentive young lady called Tanya, who like most Londoners from the East End was friendly and chatty and most helpful. We did mention our problems with the room, but she did say she was only the help and that we were given one of the least comfortable rooms in the hotel, and unfortunately she was the only human being we saw during our stay.
So now the bad points: the “hotel” is basically a shop-front nestling between Ye Olde Kebab Shoppe on one side and a hairdressers on the other, and when we arrived at the small doorway to the right of the shop window we were greeted by a computer screen on the wall – no reception, in fact no-one in evidence at all. We entered our details into the touch-screen, rather like confirming a booking at the doctor, and after the computer very generously accepted that we had a pre-paid booking, delivered our keys into a tray below, rather like buying a chocolate bar from a vending machine. Before seeing the computer screen, and expecting to be greeted by some human or other, I had pressed on a small bell-push with a speaker to the left, but no-one responded. One wonders how we would have contacted anyone if there had been a problem with the booking…
The room, just at the top of a narrow flight of stairs, is just too small for two people, and has no drawers into which to unpack. There is a scrappy rail for hanging coats and suits jammed in the corner, and a tiny safe below that, but apart from the very loose narrow shelf under the mirror, and the also very loose shelf by the bed, there is nowhere to even put anything down. The bed is very close to the wall on one side with no space for anything, so for one person no bedside lamp or anywhere to put a travel clock, book, glass of water, etc. Available floor space under the mirror was limited by a rather large Wi-Fi mains plug with aerial, but unfortunately the Wi-Fi had such a poor signal in the room I had to sit on the stairs outside to make an internet connection. The TV was very cheap, and the remote old and worn, so it was difficult to know which button did what. We also found that bizarrely there was no sound on some channels, and reception was pretty rubbish. We also wondered why someone would hang a picture right behind a TV, until (after banging my head on the TV a few times as I passed the end of the bed) we looked underneath and found a big missing patch of wallpaper with damaged plaster, another indication of the general neglect apparent in the room. Finally, the shower is one of the cheaper electrical models with very poor water pressure, so no decent shower either.
There is a small outside roof terrace with table and chairs, presumably for smokers, but there was a very strong smell of pigeon guano wafting across from the festering building next door (the aforementioned kebab shop – not a place that I would recommend patronising), and this explained the mass of anti-pigeon netting above all outside areas.
All in all, we just glad we were only staying one night, although from the reviews from other guests we think there must be much better rooms in the hotel. Just avoid Room 4, though I’m not sure the negotiating capabilities of the computer would be up to a change of room…
Room Tip: Avoid Room 4, although we understand it is due to be refurbished soon.
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC