Hotel Indigo London - Kensington by IHG — Hotel in London

I had a significant discount when I booked this room, so that was my main reason for staying here. However, after this first stay, I would consider staying here again even at full price. This was a great find for a London hotel. The hotel is overall comfortable and clean. They are taking the Covid-19 safety measures seriously, so that helped make the hotel feel extra safe and clean. The room was quite spacious for a double room in London. The bed was a little firm but it was comfortable and I still got lots of good sleep (the room is not soundproof, though). The bathroom is also a decent size for London standards (room sizes in Europe are not the same as they are in North America, etc.). Breakfast was served in the restaurant, and both the full English and the pancake breakfasts were delicious and plentiful. What impressed me the most were the staff. They were all very friendly, welcoming and helpful. It felt like they all genuinely wanted to make my stay a pleasant one. There was one issue, but I felt it also showed how willing the staff were to do their best to rectify a problem. So, I would say that a fault also became top marks for the staff's problem solving abilities, and therefore it should be seen as a big plus as well as a small minus.

I know London very well, and therefore I know that Earl's Court is an excellent location for visitors outside of the Zone 1 city centre. It is on the Piccadilly line, the same line that goes to both Heathrow (roughly 40-50 minutes from Earl's Court) and the city centre (10-20 minutes, depending on where you want to go). There are also lots of cheaper bus options to and from the centre (remember that 1 Hopper fare gives you unlimited bus travel within 90 minutes of touching in with your Oyster card or contactless card). But Earl's Court is also a pleasant neighbourhood, with lots of great shops, restaurants and pubs to visit.

I would be lying if I said there were no problems at all. Unfortunately, during my first night, I had no hot water from either the sink or the shower in my room. At best, it was lukewarm, so I was able to shower but it was not a relaxing one. I did bring this up at reception. I was offered another room, but the water was the same temperature and the room was a little smaller, so I ended up keeping the original room thinking that I would have to put up with the lack of hot water for the two nights I was staying there. In all fairness, the receptionist was trying her best to find a solution, and she kept telling me the manager was trying to fix the boiler. By the following morning, the hot water was back, and I ended up having excellent showers for the rest of my stay. When I checked out, the guy at reception explained that they had a new boiler installed, and they could not understand why it did not work at first.

I'm only mentioning this because I feel that I should give a completely honest and fair review. As I said, this issue also showed how much the staff tried to resolve the issue (which they also eventually did), so this issue should not be a deterrent to stay here, as long as there are no more similar complaints. Things can break down in hotels as they can everywhere else, so I would say that if this is a one-off event, then this hotel is still an excellent...

I made a 4 night reservation at the Hotel Indigo Kensington 11 months before our planned stay. I used IHG points. Surprisingly, a few weeks before our arrival, our reservation showed up as cancelled on the IHG website. I did not receive any notification from the hotel or IHG that I no longer had a reservation. So I called IHG and was routed to guest relations. They opened up a case and said for that some reason the hotel cancelled my reservation. So I exchanged some emails with the hotel. The hotel reservations manager said they had a software issue but had now created another reservation using points for me, but they couldn’t tell me how many points it would be would be. I was told that IHG could tell me that. Also, their reservation number was not visible on the IHG site or app. IHG representatives could not view it either. Even after a couple more calls to IHG guest relations who tried to contact a hotel manager, I was getting nowhere and running out of time before our checkin date. Eventually, IHG guest relations told me that I needed to talk to the IHG awards department and I so I did too a few times. Finally, an IHG awards manager, Irene, was able to talk to a hotel manager, and they worked a deal to give me my reservation back for my original number of points. The required number of points had gone up dramatically, almost double, and I did not want to pay that and it would have been unfair. Also, this hotel plus others in London had very high nightly rates by this time.

We picked this hotel because it was an IHG property that was close to a subway terminal. It is in a very good location for London sightseeing. They put us in a room on the fourth floor since we requested not to be in the basement. However, that 4th floor room became very warm. The air conditioning was set on 21° C but the temperature stayed at 24.5° C. The air conditioning unit was on but did not put out very much air. After a couple complaints at the front desk and speaking with their maintenance man, I was finally given a portable air conditioner that did not cool the room, but at least moved the air around. My frustration with the situation is that at first the maintenance person only looked at their centralized management of the AC system to see that it was set correctly. I had to intervene to get some additional action taken. The room still was very stuffy with the portable unit. It was warm weather for London in the high 70s and our room faced the afternoon sun so we kept the curtains closed.

When we checked out of the hotel, I was asked if I enjoyed my stay. I told the front desk that the room still had a problem with the temperature. They apologized and told me they were going to give me 2000 points for my trouble which I have not seen yet. Also, I have not yet seen my 500 welcome points they promised either. While the accommodations did work for us, I doubt that we would choose this particular hotel again. We mainly used the room for sleeping and it was uncomfortable for that. Also, the issues with the cancelled reservation was very frustrating. I took a lot of calls on my own behalf over a few week period to finally get a satisfactory resolution of restoring my original reservation’s...

I have waited to write this review as I wanted to cool off a bit and see what IHG/Hotel Indigo would do based on the experience. Unfortunately, their idea of resolving the issue was far from what I would consider adequate, and they left me with the feeling that they really didn't understand the impacts the issue had.

I do wish there were more options when providing the ranking as the majority of the staff we dealt with were very good (though limited with the support they could give), but the overall experience and brush-off we received at the end of the stay pulled that mark down.

When we 1st arrived and were informed we had to go down the stairs to get to the room I was worried as I had heard so many negatives about the basement rooms, but my initial reaction when I saw the room was positive. It was spacious, had a separate area for my daughter's cot, a nice big skylight over the main area, and was stylish and included literature in the room on the room service, restaurant options, and also talked about the extremely comfortable beds.

We left for the day, came back when it was dark, and then went to bed. We both had a terrible sleep as the beds are far from comfortable and then I was awoken before 5 am by daylight starting to come in as the skylight blinds were open and I could not find a way to close them. When we asked for the remote at the front desk they apologized and assured me they would look into getting one. After a short while they called the room and advised that the remote had gone missing and maintenance was aware of it, but there was nothing they could do and no other rooms to move to, they would however speak to the supervisor and our bill would be adjusted for the inconvenience. I will add at this point that I do not feel maintenance is very attentive as the bathroom floor tiles were almost all loose and it didn't appear any attempt was being made to correct this.

As we had no option but to deal with the broken skylight mornings came very early so the 2nd night we decided to come back to the room earlier and order room service (they claim it is available until late). When we called to arrange at 9pm we were advised the kitchen was closed and there was only 1 person working so there would be no food available.

The day we went to check out and asked about the credit, I was advised the supervisor wasn't in, but that they would talk to them as soon as they arrived, and have our bill adjusted.

I finally received an email from Rakesh at the hotel 4 days later with a very canned response that did not address the specific issues, but just that they were sorry they couldn't meet our expectations, but they would coach their staff to do better. When I questioned this and reiterated the negative stay, I was told that they would provide me with no credit, but had talked about it and instead would provide me with 10,000 IHG points on my account which has a value of about 4% of our stay. It sent a strong message that once your stay is done their customer support is too.

Very disappointing experience overall especially after our experience at other IHG group hotels in the past. It will make me second guess a stay at the brand...