Tower London Hotel

This is the first time I have ever contributed to a travel site - shows just how much the experience wound us up.

We have stayed at the Tower Thistle on several occasions in past years and always enjoyed it. We travelled to London to go to the Excel Boat Show in January and decided to try the now renamed Guoman Tower hotel again as it was conveniently only a short distance along the river from Canary wharf and there were discounted rooms for Boat Show attendees. We were also aware that the hotel had supposedly undergone a makeover . What a disappointment.

Booking in was Ok - there was no one else at Reception. On arrival in the room we discovered that two lights didn't work. The head of one table light came away in my hands whilst trying to switch it on - exposing the live prongs. The safe was locked . We also noticed that someone had removed the throwover and cups/ saucers from the rooms. The mini bar was empty.

The housekeeper arived promptly and told us that they now didn't provide throwovers and the small glasses with a piece of wire wrapped round them had replaced the cups and saucers.

She called the electrician and told us that he would be with us shortly. An hour and a half later we got fed up and went out, calling briefly at the reception to tell them that he still had not arrived.

Later that night we returned . The safe was open and one light mended.

A more detailed look around the bathroom revealed mould on the ceiling, splits in the door frame and rough finishing by whoever had cut the door to fit.

The next morning ( without notice) the downstairs brasserie was closed for 'maintenance' although no one was currently working on it. The upper foyer restaurant was very busy and we queued for about 15 minutes to be seated - glad we got up early! When we left there was a queue in excess of 20 people waiting to go in.

The following morning at 0815 maintenance work started somewhere over our room. Th drilling was incredibly loud and we could scarcely hear ourselves speak. We subsequently complained to the reception staff on checkout and were told that we would have been notified about the building works when registering. If we had we had both managed to forget that vital piece of information. The receptionist stated that she would get the Manager to speak with us and went away, returning shortly afterwards to inform us that he was unavailable. It was suggested that we speak with the Guest Services Officer.

When we finally managed to speak with her the most she could say was 'sorry' but as we were travelling in a group someone would have been told of the building works. Sorry - wrong facts - we were travelling alone, but that was the best she could do. We told her that we had stayed at the hotel before and had no intention of returning but she needed to pass the feedback on. Did she write anything dowm - No.

We walked out- very disgruntled, and will never return. I wish I had read the review on this site before we had booked.