I spend a lot of time in London, and when I'm there I tend to have meetings all day, and either business or social events in the evening.

As a result, all I ask for from a hotel is somewhere that I can get to late at night, crash into bed, and then get up the next morning to have a (good) shower and leave. I don't need any of the trimmings because I just don't use them. Therefore I find Travelodges do me just fine (most of the time).

But last weekend my hotel was arranged and paid for by a client, and they very kindly booked me into a Hilton.

This was ideal because I was actually going to be spending some time in my room this time because I had a speech to write - so I'd be able to do it in relative luxury.

The room was nice, and the shower was great.... But that's where the 'luxury' stopped. Everything else was a complete pain in the backside:

  1. I ordered copies of the FT and Guardian newspapers for the Saturday morning, so I could check for any news I might want to mention in my speech. The newspapers didn't show up. A small issue I'd normally ignore.
  2. I tried to use their in-room broadband connection, but it didn't work. I called their tech-support number and spent half an hour checking through different possibilities before they gave up and said they needed to "escalate it to second line tech support", who would ring me back shortly. The call never came.
  3. I asked to settle my bill on the Saturday night because I would be leaving early on Sunday, and in a rush. The bill showed drinks I had bought in the bar, which was fine, but then it also showed the broadband (£15!!), so we argued about that, it showed the Guardian and the FT (which I wouldn't normally have argued about, but for the problem over the broadband, so they then took this off as well), and it showed an orange Schweppes from the in-room minibar. I hadn't even spotted that the room had a mini-bar (you can tell I normally stay in budget hotels!), so hadn't even opened the door of it. But after the arguments over the other items this was going to be one argument too far for me, so I just ignored that. I settled the bill.
  4. I didn't order newspapers to be delivered on the Sunday, but the Observer arrived. Again, a small matter that I normally wouldn't bother about, but it all adds up to create frustration.
  5. Today I have received an invoice from Hilton, showing that they have then also charged the Observer newspaper that I didn't ask for, and the room charges that my client had pre-paid already, to my credit card! That means I'm going to have one of those incredibly frustrating phone calls tomorrow, which I'm already dreading, to sort all this out and get my money back.

So am I now converted to paying more to stay in a luxury hotel? Absolutely not!

This was a perfect opportunity to get a frequent visitor to London to switch from budget hotels to Hilton hotels by impressing me with the extra level of service - but actually, I get better service in the budget hotels!

Okay, rant over. :)