Enrico Hotel — Hotel in London

Xmas weekend to London, turned into a horror film with me and my girlfriend re-enacting life as a enemy prisoner of war during our brief stay. Immediately another hotel was booked for a cheaper price and we escaped our capture. We were truly living a nightmare on elm street.||||Hotel booked through a third-party agency 4 weeks before our trip. We knew it was going to be a budget hotel but I would describe budget as liveable. Hotel Enrico was not. Hotel Enrico is not what it looks like on images/adverts, it is worse and would advise anyone not to stay!||||From Victoria station we took the short walk to Hotel Enrico. Once found we entered the foyer where a buzzer system was in place. After pressing the buzzer which reminded me of a prison alarm to signal entry into the communal area, we gained entry to the property. That is after we were met with a wooden framed glass door (red flag raised on the security front) which the ‘yutes’ of London would easily be able to shatter and probably make some improvements on the renovations that had previously been made. Upon entering said door, immediately to the right was a customer’s room, not a reception but a room (red flag number 2 raised on security). Down the stairs we went lugging all our bags as there is no lift service to the reception. A mirrored window slid open to an adult woman. This woman was kind but didn’t put us at ease as she portrayed a teenager’s first day on the job. Benefit of the doubt given, I explained we had come to drop bags off in their luggage storage facility and in turn she guided us through another wooden framed glass door. To our surprise the luggage holding facility doubled up as the breakfast area. The woman stated that this room “is normally locked but people do come in and out”. I would suggest at this point you put apple air tags or other location tracking devices inside the bags. Surprisingly the bags were still there when we checked in later on in the afternoon, especially when they could have been accessed via the basement rubbish entrance round the side.||||A day full of anxiousness was immediately sky rocketed as we checked in and put the key into the room door. The best way to describe the door is that a piece of paper over the doorframe would have been more substantial, the door was thin it somehow bent into the room as if previous customers had played the role of Marv and Harry AKA ‘The Sticky Bandits’ from the Home Alone film franchise to see if the door would come off it hinges. I can confirm the answer is yes it probably would.||||The bed would be described as a mattress on top of a camping bed. No headboard just a portable bed frame, a mattress, 2 pillows and a duvet to share. I would highly advise that anyone who sleeps on these beds are athletic, as to get out of them you have to climb Mount Everest. On top of that when you get out of bed and stand up, the carpet isn’t attached to floor making your very short journey from the bed to the toilet somewhat like Buddy the Elf’s journey from the North Pole to New York.||||The bathroom is most hostels proudest amenity. Hotel Enrico does not take any pride in this amenity as the make shift bathroom has less leg room and room to move than a RyanAir bathroom. When you sit down on the toilet the door cannot close, unless you actually like having a set of knees and a working back. This must not have stopped the previous tenants as they’re hair was found in each corner of this very small bathroom. It’s always nice when hotel staff don’t bother cleaning the bathroom between stays isn’t it? Also, I would not like to imagine what has been going on in the shower as the shower curtain was soiled with what looked like blood, but on the other hand the previous tenant probably stubbed their toe on the tap (which was at ceiling height) and mistook the shower curtain to the toilet roll. During this fracas I would also have imagined that the shower rail came off the ceiling in this incident as it was attached to the ceiling by a piece of wiring.||||The upkeep of the room was not visible until I looked at the wall and ceiling where it looked like Jonny, aged 5, has had a go at repairing the hotel. They might have let him finish off the paining until he wiped his brushes on the curtains. The hotel should really stop letting Jonny, aged 5, maintain the upkeep of the property especially when wall sockets become floor or whatever you can lean it on socket. I think the final straw with Jonny, aged 5, came when to lock the window you would have to rest it on the door frame, so the Sticky Bandits can’t make their way up the drain pipe and enter the window via this way.||||The walls, or thinly layered pieces of cardboard shall I say where thinner than the bank notes the hotel manager is sitting on in their off property, lavish house considering the prices of this property. Every inch of the hotel was heard. Due to the security of the door I made the decision to move the bed to create an extra barrier to the potential thieves or worse. This resulted in a sleepless night as door slamming, people shouting and late check inners made their way to their slum. In addition to the sleepless night the radiators where on full heat with no dial on the radiator to turn it down. The night time turned to the Sahara Desert being kept up by the sounds of the local wildlife, not as glamourous as the Lion King makes it out to be.||||Due to the lack of presence from the management, the work staff were left to deal with my ‘Karen’ like behaviour. I would like to say that all off my complaint has been backed up with images below and are fully validated by the third-party booking service. On four occasions I tried to set up a meeting, to express my concern with the management for them not even turn up to the property. The members of staff, who I can’t fault for their response and help guiding me through the complaints service on the third-party app. I really hope the management don’t punish the staff to even more slave work that they employed to do. To portray the hotel staff’s guidance, it was more like a nod of the head to say no your complaint is invalidated and a mouthing off, go to the third party complain and hopefully will free us from this hell hole in the process. On day 2 we booked into another hotel. This was like the world had been lifted off my girlfriend and I’s shoulders and were finally free.||||||Overall, I would categorically say DO NOT BOOK this hotel under any circumstance. There are plenty of hotels across London around the same price or cheaper. Management is poor the hotel is worse; save your money and go elsewhere to skip the disappointment and ordeal we have gone through to even file...

The Enrico Hotel, closely modelled on a low-budget Siberian correctional facility built by Stalin himself, is a wretched, visitor-hostile dystopia of wrongness. Without any change or modification, it could be re-opened tomorrow as London’s premier museum of ‘Things People Don’t Like About Cheap Hotels’. If I had to choose between staying here again or enjoying a wet weekend in a leaky tent on a thistle patch surrounded by radioactive wolves, I’d go for the hotel, obviously (I’m not stupid) — but it would be a very close call.||||The fun began with the welcome my partner and I got at Reception, which consisted of a curt, rather surly person peering through a narrow window and demanding, “Show ID”. That was it. That’s about as much as they could muster in terms of a welcoming smile and a friendly, cheerful attitude. It was a charm offensive with the ‘charm’ bit left out.||||When my partner tried to hand over her ID, a piece of heavy plastic screening fell down inside the window as if trying to chop her hand off. This was our slightly startling introduction to the fact that everything in the Enrico is broken, breaking or missing altogether. It’s like a collection of scenes from a cheap TV show about why maintenance is important and what happens if you don’t do any.||||To get to our room, my partner and I had to lug our suitcases up four flights of narrow stairs. They don't have an elevator at the Enrico because of course they don't — that would be far too useful. An elevator would be strictly incompatible with the management’s intense devotion to visitor-hostile inconvenience. And anyway, even if they had an elevator, it would be broken.||||The room itself was small, bare, cramped and visibly deteriorating. Rather remarkably, everything in it creaked. The bed creaked. The floorboards were a symphony of creaks. The door creaked and also had a highly aggressive closer on it, such that unless we were ultra careful it SLAMMED shut so hard we could have easily lost a finger. We also had fun with the kettle, the electrical cord for which was too short to reach the tabletop so we had to use it on the floor. The in-room ‘refreshments’ consisted of one small glass containing a squashed teabag, two sticks of Nescafe from about 2006 plus, as an added bonus, two wooden ‘stirrers’ offering all the functional rigidity of wet string.||||On the wall in our room, there was a telephone that neatly summed up the entire Enrico experience. It didn’t work, the wall was visibly crumbling around it and the receiver wouldn’t sit on the cradle so it had to be precariously propped up on the lip of the phone or just left dangling. It looked like a conceptual artist had tried to express ‘sadness’ using the medium of curly plastic.||||Not having the luxury of an en-suite shower or toilet, we were using our landing’s communal facilities, all of which were clearly designed to suit narrow, nearly two-dimensional people who love wash basins too small for the human hand and soap dispensers that are (a) empty and (b) fall apart on contact.||||I do understand the concept of inexpensive, no-frills ‘budget’ hotels. I’ve stayed at a few and many offer a good night’s rest and excellent value for money. The En-creak-o isn’t one of them. The only enjoyable moment of our stay was when we finally departed, knowing that we’d never see it again (except possibly in nightmare flashbacks and documentaries devoted to ‘London’s Most Rubbishy Hotels’).||||Do not stay at this squalid, failed misadventure of a...

I rarely comment on hotel stays, but i feel that the staff at this hotel particularly the reception attendant went above and beyond on my stay this past Thursday evening Aug 30/31. I came in on a flight that was delayed, which set me many hours behind to arrive at the hotel i had originally booked with. They had given my room away, and were trying to have me upgrade to stay in a room reserved for families at 4 times the price. After arguing w the attendant at the other hotel (which will remain nameless) I found myself on the streets of downtown London with an option of taking a 2 hour bus ride to Gatwick airport and sleeping at the terminal, or making the best of it with the homeless in the area. Fortunately I stumbled upon the Enrico, and they had vacancy. The attendant didnt try to up me into a bigger room, i only had 5 hours to sleep, he suggested a smaller more economical option. Im not going to lie, the room was spartan, but the bed comfortable and very quiet, exactly what i needed from a long days journey. It was how the attendant was so accomadating that made the difference for me. This area of London is bustling in the day but remarkably quiet in the wee hours of the morning. As i had missed dinner, and there was nothing open in the area, the attendant went to the kitchen and gave me some fruit and a muffin exactly what I needed to get me through to breakfast. He also provided an adaptor at no cost so I could charge my mobile, and an extra pillow as i had a sore back from all of the travel. A few hours later at breakfast, i was pleased that there was a mutligrain bread and granola option, cold cuts, aged cheddar, yogurt, small bite sized croissants, fruit, coffee, juice all of good quality and of course nutella for a nice way to send me off to the train for Gatwick. For a short stay under extenuating circumstances, I was very pleased and would not hesitate to recommend this hotel to anyone wanting to stay in the Victoria area for a reasonable value. My only regret is that i didnt get the attendants name, but hats off you did a bang up job in accomadating me, and will definitely return the next time I am in London on business, much appreciated your kindness and understanding in a tough travel...