The Langham, Sydney — Hotel in Sydney

Why are you choosing a luxury hotel? Most of us are looking for a feeling, based on the experience, that makes us feel like we have made a great choice, between many 5* hotels; each looking to stamp their brand, as the one that stands out. Langham first stands out as easily the most expensive. We chose it, because the rooms are unusually large at 52m2. That's big! Don't bother choosing harbour views, as my photos show. Increasingly, they will be obscured by barangaroo "progress". The service will give you the feeling you seek. It marvellous and as ubiquitous as Western culture. Our hotel experience and feelings are so often boosted as we eat breakfast. It's become a thing since the rest of the industry realised why the few loved the mystique of the Ritzs of the world...it wasn't the Georgian furniture, it was the lavish breakfasts, full of surprise and ...butter. The thing that breakfast does for a hotel is leave you with memories of that which you wouldn't dare to have at home. And this just before you check out on the final day. That drives occupancy. Not at the langham. You have fruit out of season, in terrible underripe state, cut abominably, and often including inedible parts of the fruit. Bread that was frozen and too poor a quality to find at Woolworth, since 1989. It's not only found at those hot bread shops you walk by and wonder who goes there any more. All the hot food has been abused worse than I could imagine at this level, and the baked good and yoghurts are as irreverently ill considered as the cereals. All in all, I haven't seen such a poor selection, so cynically conceived and executed for decades, at any level, in any country. When I raised this, we were given the a la carte menu. That raised the quality from incomprehensibly abysmal, to very poor and below any reasonable standard. But the room is great, albeit quite 90s. A little worn in places, with mediocre toiletries and some features unseen in hotels at this level, in many years...none of this is a big deal though. It's a very comfortable, large room. And the service really is great. But....you can do better...

We have always loved staying at Langham over the years and it is certainly a beautiful hotel , from the foyer to the rooms, but this time we were not terribly impressed with our impromptu staycation overall experience especially considering the cost of a room per night. While the staff are polite, friendly and abundant, the customer service was still lacking with alot of staff wandering around appearing to be very busy but not actually attentive or serving their clientele. In fact , they seem to avoid making eye contact or notice you when you need any attention. This happened a few times over the weekend in the restaurant as well as floor staff. We wanted to order a bucket of ice for our room , we rang for room service a couple of times but nobody answered the phone so we decided to go down to the bar ourselves to get a bucket of ice. The staff also don't seem to be well informed on the services available in the hotel eg we wanted a coffee and cake as we arrived in the afternoon but no body seem to be aware that we could just actually order from the Observatory bar. The breakfast was very ordinary too and not worth the $50 per head for a 5 star hotel. First morning we waited 5 or 6 minutes for someone to notice us at the egg station then eggs were left there and cold because they dont bring them to your table or let you know they are ready. Not 5 star service we are used to. And to top it off, when we checked out and paid our final bill, we later found out they had also charged us for the holding deposit in error. The pool and spa were lovely and we did enjoy using the steam room as well. Worth a mention too that they did upgrade our room unexpectedly on arrival which was a bonus. Hopefully this was just a one off and we will once again enjoy an all round 5 star...

I prefer to stay classic hotels than the modern ones as I think the staff and the atmosphere are usually very cosy, prompt and good-mannered. At first, they e-mailed me welcome something and about the construction going a couple of days before we stay. The construction notice didn't include our arrival day, so I didn't care about it. It looks fine when we arrived and they gave us one of our rooms before checking-in time. But, it turned out that the room was full of noise from the construction (was still going on and never told)downstairs. We had had plans, so we just went out. We asked a receptionist (girl) to change the noisy room after we came back in the night. What she said first was that YOU could SWAP the rooms! Is that the solution? I was very surprised but I patiently insisted how noisy the room was. Finally she gave us another room, but she was very rude and arrogant you couldn't imagine at it called an excellent hotel. Some staff are very nice and kind and some staff are not, like we say hello to them, but never reply and so on. After we came back our holidays, I noticed they had charged some quite amount on my credit card even we hadn't used any facilities and hadn't got any receipts. I e-mailed them about the charge and the reservation desk replied that the Front Desk Team would get back to me as soon as possible. Then nothing happened the entire week, so I e-mailed them again how the investigation going and a reservations desk person responded that they gave the money back a couple days ago, so you would see the back on my credit. That's it. No apologies or...