citizenM London Bankside

I travel often, and I’ve never experienced such poor service in a hotel before. Our room was extremely cold, and when we reported it to reception, the night receptionist, who was alone at the time, did what she could: she increased the room temperature remotely from their system and kindly offered us an extra blanket. I appreciated the gesture in that moment, but unfortunately the temperature increase didn’t work at all. Even though our in-room control iPad showed that the temperature had gone up by three degrees compared to the afternoon, the room still felt freezing cold. We politely asked them to send someone to check the temperature, but nobody came. When we returned late at night, around 3 am the room was still freezing. I ended up getting sick that night because of how cold it was. The next morning, I didn’t have time to go to reception in person, so I tried calling them. No one answered for hours. When someone finally picked up, the woman on the phone didn’t seem to understand the situation at all. She didn’t even apologize for the inconvenience, she simply told me there was no maintenance staff available. I explained that I was already unwell and couldn’t spend another night in such conditions, and all she kept saying was that she didn’t like the way I was speaking to her (she repeated this four times) instead of actually trying to help. I wasn’t rude; I was just asking for a simple solution: to have the heating turned up before I returned, since it takes hours for the room to warm up. It was unbelievable how dismissive she was. Eventually, my wife had to cancel her plans and go to the hotel earlier than expected just to deal with the issue. They finally agreed to change our room (something I suggested, not them). To make matters worse, they asked to call them with the room phone whenever ready to move but she had to go down in person because the phone in our room didn’t even work. The new room was a bit warmer and didn’t blow cold air like the first one, but still far from comfortable, and by then, I already had a fever. When I called to ask for the temperature to be increased, they told me the maximum was 24°C (the standard maximum) I explained that the previous night the temperature had been set to 27°C remotely but the now present receptionist insisted that wasn’t possible. A few hours later, I checked again. The thermostat was magically at 27°C. This hotel clearly has heating and air conditioning issues (even one of the staff admitted it), and some receptionists have no idea how to handle guest problems. The attitude and lack of professionalism were shocking. I strongly recommend avoiding this place. The rooms are cold, the communication is terrible, and the staff can be downright rude. One of the most uncomfortable and frustrating hotel stays I’ve ever had

Several issues with the room. Staff doesn’t want to help, refuses to handle the change.

Awful. Stayed when the air con packed up. They didn’t say anything just kept saying the system takes a while to cool the room. Was horrific. Would avoid in future.