291 Suites

Great accomodation! Very spacious room with a tiny kitchen and shower bath.
The bus 139 stops in front of the building’s entrance and it is a line that cover the centre of London (Oxford street, Piccadilly cicrcus, Trafalgafr square).
West end lane is full of place where eat from Strada, a very fancy restaurant to a simple kebab store with great prices (fish and chips for 3.99£).
The undergroung is only 5 minutes walk.

Stayed at 291 suites in February ’08.
At the time, the website made it look great, nice rooms, discount at the restaurant down stairs, and a short walk from the tube stations. At no point was any building work mentioned
We arrived in due course, to find the walk from the tube station was a bit more than a short one (I had the blisters to prove it!!) and there was lots of building work taking place, the hallways where very dusty, and also the promised restaurant downstairs had changed hands and no longer offered a discount to hotel guests.
The one positive thing about the place was the room was lovely, we had a 4 nights stay and I was happy to be in that room, it was nicely decorated, bright and airy, had all the facilities promised, and had a general nice feel about it, except for the shower, which was a liability waiting to happen!
The shower was supposed to be a power shower with multiple nozzles etc, well it did have all that, but power was stretching the truth slightly, and none of the knobs had directions on them so you had no idea what worked which part of the shower and you spent most of the time crammed in to the corner trying to avoid either blistering hot water or shockingly cold, it took a lot of practise to suss it all out properly.
We quickly found out on the first night that a lot of pigeons were roosting in a hole above our window, and pigeons don’t seem to sleep, or at least don’t shut up when sleeping, and we had a constant pigeon cooing sound all through the night, which without the use of the ear plugs we had bought, would have made for a very unsettled night as it was very loud and persistent.
But earplugs didn’t spare us from the noise that greeted us the next morning in the form of very loud drilling and hammering from an adjoining room from 8am every single day we where there, some times pre 8am, talking jack hammer sounds and brick drilling, that basically made our room vibrate. Again we had no warning that this was going to be taking place so was not prepared for it to happen, and the reason why we in London in the first place meant we were arriving back to our rooms very late in to the night and the last thing we needed was the early morning wake up call.
On one occasion, we arrived back from being out around town (passing reception on our way up that was staffed) to get ready for our evening out, to find that the water was off, so we had no opportunity to shower or get clean before going out, and as many know, after spending the day in shops and riding on the tube, you need a shower and yet no one thought to inform us as we came in.
As we came to leave, we did ask for a refund for at least part of the cost of staying there but was told we had to email our request in, which we duly did upon arriving home, and didn’t receive a reply, we rang the place to be told to email a different address and the woman on the phone said she’d personally deal with it, but never did get back to us. Eventually we gave up trying to get any thing out of them.
Overall, the room was nice to stay in, they could be a little bit more honest about a few things, and if they did buck up their ideas I’d probably consider staying there again, but only if they made a few major changes.