DoubleTree by Hilton London Kensington — Hotel in London

Update for a stay in Dec 24, where I paid my target £150 and it remains at 23 stars. Room was too warm, heating controls were locked so could not go less than 19C. There were stains on towels and floors which was a bit icky. Location for what I needed was excellent so it was tolerable.

Location is very good, 2 minutes from Gloucester Road tube station that includes the Piccadilly line for Heathrow. Lots of shops and restaurants in walking distance. Price when I stayed was on the relatively lower cost end for zone 1.

Check in was good with diligent and attentive front of house staff.

I was upgraded from a double guest room to a duplex room. This was on the 6th floor and has the bedroom up a flight of stairs in the roof, with a sitting area down below. It was nice to be upgraded, however the room was underwhelming as it looked nothing like the picture that shows a stylish 2 level suite. The downstairs areas had a small table and two chairs, then 1 chair and a single bed (perhaps left over from when 3 people were staying in the room?). It was dingy and it was not spacious with the TV under the stairs and no sofa to sit on if you were to watch it.

Room was at the back of the hotel so very quiet, though as it was in the roof, when it rained, it was loud on the skylights.

Bathroom is ok, shower hot, though water pressure was less in the morning than the previous night. If you are sleeping with 3 or 4 in the room, those downstairs will have to pass through the upper sleeping area to access the bathroom.

The bed was two singles pushed together. Not great as rooms described as Kings and Queens for the bed situation.

There was a balcony, yet I could not work out how to get the doors open to get to it.

1 of the two lifts was out of order, seems to have been that way for at least 4 days. It was ok, no long waits for the one remaining small lift. If the hotel was full, could see it being a problem. There were stairs, 1 set to floor 1 and a separate set from floor 1 to floor 6.

Ordered at the bar a decaf cappuccino and it was frustrating at £5 to see the bar team member (note that bar staff said that only 1 of the bar team knows how to use the coffee machine to start with, not fair on that person to be lumbered with all coffee orders) start to make it with a sachet of Nescafe being placed into the barista machine. This does not work as the grains are not coarse enough. We stopped the order on seeing this and suggest the staff should share that if you order decaf you are getting the same sachet that is free in your room. £5 for this is a gouge!

Breakfast was ok, not great, but enough of a choice to fill you up. I stepped out for coffee though. Found better, paid less.

Suggest at £150 or less it is ok, more than this price and it is too expensive for what you get. Looking today at prices in 1 and 2 weeks, the cheapest flexible HH rate is £189 and £256 for a Double Guest room and no Duplex rooms available in 1 week and £317 in two weeks. At these prices, the hotel is not good value. However there are these days where everything in Zone 1 London seems ludicrously expensive, so it could be that too...

The area is great, front of house are solid, if you can book at less than £150 with a room at the quieter back of the hotel, avoid the coffee, hope the 2nd lift is fixed and there should...

Bottom line: Great location, rooms pretty good, service and food wonderful. Will definitely stay here again.

My family enjoyed our 9 night stay at the Doubletree Kensington. First, the location cannot be beat. Every imaginable convenience is 200 yards away. While I did try the hotel breakfast (which was good), my family opted for one of the several pastry and coffee shops that are right outside the hotel (highly recommend PAUL). There is also a small grocery and a pharmacy across the street for anything else you might need. The Gloucester Road tube station, also 200 yards away, connects you to all of London in less than 30 minutes. We took the Piccadilly line in from Heathrow and it worked out fine. As another reviewer noted, the sidewalk is slate but we did not have much issue with our roller bags. There is a small lift next to the stairs to help get your bags into the hotel. There is no on-site parking.

We booked one of the two story suites that had a king bed and bathroom up with a sofa bed and seating area down. It faces Cromwell Road, which is quite busy. We always bring a white noise machine and had no problem with traffic noise. We did not hear any of our neighbors. While no room is ever perfect, we found the cleanliness good but the overall condition to be average (as in, normal wear and tear on a hotel room). Blackout curtains worked great. No issues with the air conditioning. Storage is always a problem when staying for a long period. We ended up using floor space to open 3 of 4 suitcases because there was only enough space for one person's clothing in the 2 drawers available. It would be nice if they used more of the open space for storage. The bathroom had adequate shelf space to stash all of our toiletry bags. Another convenient feature is that the room had lots of wall outlets with the section by the desk having multiple styles of plugs. I didn't check the voltage but I would assume that the variety of plugs still carried 50hz/220v. Apparently European hotels have a regulation about plugs in bathrooms, be prepared to blow dry and curl your hair sitting on the bed.

The Secret Garden restaurant is a nice quiet space to enjoy the summer weather. We had a few appetizers and cocktails that were excellent. There are no ice machines in the hotel but the bar can give you an ice bucket.

The staff is always friendly and accommodating. I used the app to begin the check in process the day prior and requested an early check in around 1 pm. I was notified it was not likely but they would try. When we arrived, we received the same story but they would have one by 3 pm for certain. My family started to discuss what to do with 2 hours when we were notified that the room was available. My other interactions with staff throughout the week were always positive and helpful. Other members of my party had started their stay at the Radisson Blu Vanderbilt on the next block and had an awful experience. They came to our hotel partway through our stay and were shocked at the superior quality and staff at the Doubletree.

Overall, we would re-book this location in a heartbeat. It's not a luxury hotel but it is on-brand with every other Doubletree I have stayed at in America. The location cannot be beat and the staff always...

Unfortunately we had a number of issues at this hotel during a 3 night stay.

1. The bathroom sink was blocked upon arrival. Reported and was quickly resolved.

2. At the same time had requested assistance with the temperature control as the room was not sufficiently heating (and it was negative 4 degrees outside). Front desk offered a portable heater which was never delivered.

3. We returned to the room on the second day to discover blood stains on both sides of one of the beds. Whilst this was promptly dealt with by front desk and the Houseman, the room should never have been left with bloodstains. It was clearly from the housekeeper who had cut themselves.

4. On the third day we returned and there was a large garbage bag left in the middle of our room! Not only did it contain the contents of our bin, but that of other rooms. There are clearly issues with housekeeping at this hotel with a lack of quality checking.

5. I enquired with the "concierge" (and I use the quotation marks specifically as that staff member was grossly under qualified to sit behind the concierge desk). He had no knowledge of what a Hop-on Hop-off bus was, despite there being 4 companies operating in London, and after being referred to the front desk, one of the team there were able to come over to the concierge desk and find 2 brochures which is all I had asked for in the first place. It's also worth mentioning I actually ended up booking with a third company I researched on my own...

6. On check out I asked for payment to be taken from a different card to the one I gave on check in (travel card vs overseas credit card). After I asked for the transaction to be paused so I could confirm the PIN for my new travel card, I got an alert on my phone to advise the payment had automatically been taken from the overseas credit card, costing me an additional fee that I was looking to avoid. (I was also told that the machine had to take a pre-auth before a payment could be taken. I've worked In hotels for 14 years and never heard of this requirment).

7. All these issues make me also bring up the fact that I had used the digital check-in facility on the Hhonors App and chose a high floor facing the street so the kids would have something to look at. When we arrived we had been allocated a completely different room - on the rear of the hotel and on the lowest floor. They called it a 'garden view' but from level 1 you can barely see the top of the the tree - certainly not a 'garden'. I was just grateful to get the early check-in and didn't have time to bring this up, but the view and room were certainly quite disappointing. We also didn't have enough towels etc for 2 adults and 2 kids so that too had to be addressed.

On the plus side - breakfast was good - and the location was ideal for us, with Gloucester Road station being very accessible and we could walk to the Natural History Museum which was one of the "must-do" items we had...