The Trafalgar St. James London, Curio Collection by Hilton - London

Excellent hotel in heart of London.

The service and attention was wonderful

We had been to London once before & this seemed like a terrific location. It is close to many sights; however, when we arrived on a Saturday the crush of people & traffic made walking anywhere very challenging. Plus, Trafalgar Square was closed for a festival of some sort, there was a Hong Kong protest march, and throngs of people were pouring out of every tube stop. My advice-don’t pay a premium for this location. Stay somewhere quieter, buy an Oyster card, and take the tube or bus everywhere. As to the hotel itself, it is masquerading as an upscale or high-class hotel or perhaps a solid business-class hotel, but it is neither & has many flaws & seems to be operated to maximize short-term profit. There is practically no lobby, as I understand the former lobby was converted into a restaurant. The top floor has a bar/restaurant open to the public, who then share the already inadequate elevators, which also creates security concerns. The shower floors are very slick, and our first shower had the half wall which ensures a flood on the floor, while our second was too small to do much except get wet. Why did we have 2 rooms? Our first room was supposed to be 300 sq. ft. with a queen bed. It had neither. Worse yet, we were on the end of the building and had loud, pulsating techno rock from an Asian disco next door preventing us from sleeping. Management could do nothing, so we were wandering the London streets at 3-4 a.m. because we couldn’t sleep.

Room was great, hotel staff was not very accommodating. We tried to go up to the roof once we checked in but were quickly shuffled away and told if we did not have a reservation, we could not go up until much much later. As a hotel guest, this information would have been nice to have before arriving as I picked this hotel due to the rooftop area, which we never in fact were able to see. But overall, our room was very nice and liked the location of the hotel.