Interestingly there’s a lack of top-end luxury hotel presence in London, given what an important role the city is playing internationally. When it comes to Marriott, there’s no St Regis or Ritz Carlton, although the former is going to be erected soon thanks to the conversion of the Westbury hotel.
On the other hand, the first Westin hotel in the UK opened its door November last year. However I wasn’t very temped, as I have seen how hideous it looks from the outside…
The other side of the hotel, which is at the river bank, has a less disturbing appearance. The hotel is about five minutes’ walk from the Mansion House station.
The main entrance leads to the ground floor and concierge. The flowers display is probably the prettiest decoration of the hotel.
Reception is on the fourth floor, and then you’ll need to walk down the hallway to take another lift for guest rooms, and the lift has two sets of buttons which have different functions. This is one of the many confusing designs this hotel has.
There’s actually a hidden but much more convenient north entrance which accesses the fourth floor directly.
The hotel advertises many different room types on their website, i.e. Signature / Classic / Privilege / Luxury. But in fact they are all identical in terms of size and facilities, and the only difference is how high or low the room is.
I wasn’t given any upgrade and assigned a Signature room on the sixth floor. You can definitely tell the newness of the room, but nothing stands out at all.
Despite of its location, there are no river view rooms in the hotel.
The main reason I wanted to give the hotel a go is its spa, as I heard it’s very good. The spa centre is at the second floor.
Sauna and steam room:
There’s a no natural light, and the sauna is electric which doesn’t feel hot enough. I was overall underwhelmed.
Westin Club is on the fourth floor, open Sunday through Thursday.
It has no view either.
Breakfast buffet：
Happy hour is from 5pm to 7pm. Two hot dishes are available including fried chicken wings, which is sufficient for me.
A few types of bottled beer are offered, but wine-wise they only provide one kind of red wine.
As a new (five-star) hotel, the Westin unfortunately doesn’t tick many boxes at all, and I’m not sure why the two friends who’d stayed here recommended it to me.
They have also reduced themselves recently to the misconduct of charging 5% service fee. Remember that it’s an optional free (which is why they get away from not including it in the total rate), so you can always ask them to remove it from your bill.
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