ME Hotel London on Aldwych in the west end has an excellent location whether you’re in town on a leisurely visit or there for business. The area itself seems a little touristy given that you have theaters with glitzy musical signage all around you but this is London, not New York, so in all reality the place is still very quiet in the evenings and on a Sunday night is downright dead.
The hotel is just a few months old and is situated in a post modern building which, my cabbie claimed, formerly housed the BBC. The decor inside is kitschy-splashy-modern but stylishly done. The rooms are tastefully designed and appointed. It looks nice. I chose it based on the pictures and I was not disappointed. The staff is fairly friendly, especially by London standards.
The hotel sports an Italian restaurant, STK (of New York’s Meatpacking district fame) and an upstairs rooftop bar with a killer view of the Thames and the city skyline. Between STK and the rooftop bar, the place can get quite popping on the right night. That being said, unlike its New York counterpart, STK can’t make a short rib worth a shit. The menu said “72-hour Braised Short Rib.” Generally I assume that means that the short rib has been braised for 72 hours but in all honestly I didn’t ask for clarification, so the fault must be mine. Maybe they just mean its 72 hours since it was cooked. Any short rib worth a damn (especially one cooked for that long or even for a tenth of that time) should fall off the bone and never really require a knife for anything but the image of civility. To my great dismay I had to be far less than civil with the piece of subpar brisket that was served to me for my $32.
Ok. So whats the issue with the hotel? The issue is that people don’t really think or don’t really care. The ME is considered a 5-star hotel. Despite the great decor, location, etc. I wouldn’t give it more than 4. A 5-star hotel must adhere to a completely different level of service. It must rise to a standard of excellence in service where every last detail has been thought through and taken care of.
I drop and give myself 50 in the morning. Somewhere on pushup number 3 I notice the scent emanating from the room’s carpet. For god’s sake people, the hotel has only been open for a couple of months. There is no excuse to say its absorbed years and years of wear, tare and bodily fluids. Washed the damn carpets.
I’m not a body wash sort of guy. I take the little hand soap they give you and use it in the shower. It disappears pretty fast. No worries, I’m sure housekeeping will get a chance to do the room before I get back in the evening. Evening: No Soap. Next Evening: No soap. Next Evening: I call, “Please bring me some soap.” If soap was part of the accessories provided with the room, there is no reason I should ever be missing a bar of soap from my room. But hey, everyone makes mistakes. In all honesty even my favorite 5-star hotels (the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, the Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur) can get things wrong or miss something. Its all about consistency, thoughtfulness and how the issue is remedied.
I buy some Gu chocolate pudding on the way home. I love that stuff and you can’t get it anywhere else. I grab a spoon and a saucer from one of the two teacup sets in the room. I eat the Gu, leave the dirty spoon and saucer on the table and head out in the morning. When I come back in the evening, the room is clean, the dirty spoon and saucer are gone. But now I have just one spoon and saucer left. I proceed to use the second and last spoon and saucer with my second cup of Gu, slightly worried as to what will happen the following day. Surprisingly they replace the spoon and saucer but even more surprisingly they only replace one. So now on my cupboard stands one cup on a saucer with a spoon on it and one lonely cup, wondering what the hell happened to its little friends and why its neighbor got its spoon and saucer back but it didn’t and what wrong with it, how is it worse than the other guy, doesn’t it deserve a saucer and spoon… A cup can easily develop an inferiority complex like that. Frankly, so can a person. What if I had someone up to my room and I had to serve tea? Go saucer-less? Really?
You won’t be surprised to know that my shower cap (yes I used the shower cap – long hair) was not replaced either and being in a hurry the following morning with no time to wait for them to bring in another, I had to contort myself to all sorts of back-wrenching angles to keep my hair from getting wet in the room’s beautiful (but limiting from a direction of water flow standpoint) rain shower.
And now here is the clincher. I send out some shirts to be laundered. They are supposed to be done the following morning. The morning comes and as I enjoy the tranquility of sleeping in late on a Saturday morning in an attempt to catch up on sleep after my flight and dream away the jet lag… the phone starts ringing its head off not 12 inches from mine. “Sir, this is Stephane from downstairs. One of our guys is in front of your room with your shirts. There is a Do Not Disturb sign on your door and he didn’t want to knock.” Really? Are you fucking kidding me? The kid who runs around with the shirts was bright enough to figure out that the big red Do Not Disturb sign probably meant I didn’t want to be disturbed with a knock but you…. you whom they put in front of a desk, don’t have the brains to figure out that calling me inside my room might just qualify as Disturbing? “Huh? What? Oh yes. Just a second.” I say, as I reluctantly rise from the bed so I might go out of my way to offer the highest quality of service to the young man holding shirts outside my hotel room door and not keep him waiting. I know this a wild idea, but maybe, just maybe, a note slipped under my door would have sufficed. Maybe something along the lines of: “Sir, We sincerely hope you are enjoying your Saturday morning. Your shirts are clean, pressed and ready. As you did not wish to be disturbed, they are being held for you downstairs. Should you wish to pick them up yourself, you may do so at reception, otherwise please ring XXXX at any time and we would be happy to have them brought up to your room right away. –Regards, Stephanie” Or even “Shirts ready. Call XXXX.”
None of these things are horrible. The hotel is fine. While they are new, you can get occasional discounts. Thus I would recommend it to a friend and stay there again. But lets not lie to our customers and ourselves and call it a 5-star hotel. If the prices were higher, I’d say you can get better “5-star” service elsewhere, even in London.