Lucky 8 Hotel Illford — Hotel in London

TLDR: Shabby, poor "Breakfast" (1 bruised apple, 1 overboiled egg, 1 yoghurt from 'orange' selection, 2 tiny plastic-sealed 'croissants'), inadequate accommodation, crime area (drug users outside) with serious incident (person hospitalised & near-death) closing off the road whilst there. Staff unable to assist.

Full details: Upon check-in, we'd been moved from Park Hotel, Ilford to Best Western, Ilford due to a maintenance issue. We'd booked through booking.com as a family of 5 (2 adults & 3 children; 12/M, 10/F & 7/M), with full cooked breakfast included. Best Western, allegedly a 3-star hotel, situated 0.5 miles from Park Hotel, had allocated us a room in their extension across the road. The room (on 2nd floor, after 4 flights of stairs & walking through a corridor smelling of Marijuana) had sloping ceilings with 2 very low double beds, a roof window & a sign warning you to watch your head; it was unbearably hot & my daughter+wife described the room as dirty. Hotel staff called it a "quadruple" room, (technically what the room booked at Park was), but this substitution was clearly not what we'd booked; whilst 2 singles & a double can generously be described as a quad room, twin double beds cannot suitably be described as being either a quad or a 'family' room (both phrases used by the hotel), nor was it adequate to accommodate the 5 booked (it later emerged the room we'd booked was perfectly suitable).

What's the relevance to Lucky 8 hotels you ask? Well, Park Hotel, Best Western & Lucky 8 hotels are all owned by the same company who apparently own at least 8 other hotels in the area as well. When we complained that the Best Western allocated room was completely inadequate, they phoned Lucky 8's who had a room. At this point, Best Western reception told us whichever hotel we checked into we'd be able to have a Full English breakfast at Best Western due to our booking including it.

Lucky 8's had a ground floor room available (better suited to disability) but it again only had two double beds. While returning to Best Western, we found drug dealers busy beside our car (parked in front of the hotel garage without any CCTV). Reception told us they needed a decision on the Lucky 8 room as another family were trying to book it. By this time we'd already been trying to book in for at least an hour and a half, & whilst it far from ideal it seemed the best prospect on the table (not least because it meant we could move our car onto their CCTV covered fore-court instead).

We checked in & moved stuff into the room, before returning to reception to see if they'd at least a couple of duvets for our son to sleep on. As well as no fold-out beds, they had no access at all to the laundry cupboard; no duvets, mattresses or additional sheets. Hence we returned to Best Western again to see if perhaps they'd access to their laundry cupboard. They didn't. We also learnt that as we were no longer guests at Best Western, we couldn't have breakfast there, apparently "Hotel Policy". The receptionist was apologetic, but as with all interactions, there was no opportunity to speak to a manager (against policy), reception had no powers to do /anything/ & we were once again shunted from pillar to post.

Lucky 8's replacement receptionist was sympathetic, but still had no options to help; manager could be talked to in the morning. Though "breakfast" was still included, we'd apparently have had to pay a £5 surcharge to have the breakfast; before Covid a Full English breakfast was included now it cost £5 extra for a "continental" breakfast (1 bruised apple, 1 overboiled egg, 1 yoghurt from 'orange' selection, 2 tiny plastic-sealed 'croissants').

Eventually, after 3½+ hours checking-in across 3 hotels, I paid for an extra room to prevent my son(12) & daughter(10) sharing a bed. The corridor outside our room smelt of marijuana. Nothing was sorted next day & to cap it off the police cordoned off the road due to an attempted...

i am currently writing this from the safety of the bus home. ||||we stayed here for a school trip. we are all between the ages of 13-15. the teachers were told to stay in a different building because there wasn’t enough room. ||||we crammed 6 people in a 3 person room because they had to stay in a different building that you had to go down a dark alleyway too, their walls were covered in brown stains, the toilet hadnt been flushed, there was no toilet paper, the tap didnt work, ect. after the teachers had brought them to our room (because they didnt rust them to go bu themselves) one of the girls had realised she had left her phone in the room. we tried but couldn’t find a teacher so we went to reception, they gave us a key to the room instead of actually helping. we had to walk fown the dark narrow alley way by ourselves, we ran since there were groups of men also there. we found her phone and ran back.||||the six of us stayed up till 4am as we didnt want to sleep in the beds, we eventually went to sleep, i used my clothes as a pillow. the rooms were very hot but we felt very uncomfortable with opening the windows, even the teachers asked we didnt open them. what made me happy tho was knowing we were only staying 1 night. the room had awful furniture, the draws and wardrobe would wobble if you touched them, there was a safe in the wardrobe but the door for it was kicked in. the beds have thin pillows one of the beds had a big rip the blanket. we refused to sleep under the blankets because it was so dirty. other rooms had 1 single bed between 2 people, red stains on the walls, and broken beds. only a few people had teaspoons and i don’t think anyone had a tv remote for the tv.||||we took it upon ourselves to make this hotel a home and put up some hindu calendars that we were given for free earlier that day. ||||||ngl i think we had a better chance of getting kidnapped in there than we were if we...

Dusty and too cramped. I understand that it is London but there was barely any walk space. They didn’t have a fridge and water in the rooms, you had to go buy cold water. The bathroom was just not at all what I was expecting. No tub or glass walls for the shower so the entire bathroom floor will get wet and no place for you to place your clothes without them getting wet. They did not clean the room properly. They were in and out within 2 minutes and that was them just quickly wiping the bathroom floor and vacuuming the carpet but in just the tiny entrance area for less than a minute. They only had one iron and stand for the entire hotel and the iron had some weird black stuff on it so it would stain your clothes. Our room was not provided a blow dryer where as another room was. Some drawers wouldn’t open and some wouldn’t close. There was a musty dank smell every time you walked into the room. The breakfast was not good. Only good thing was the hash browns and the yogurt everything else was disappointing and not worth it. The receptionists were absolutely disgusting. This dyed blonde girl with glasses was the worst one. They were extremely disrespectful and did not treat their guests with respect. The blonde chick especially was just a disgusting human being. She continued to play race and gender cards to try and gaslight the guests who had complaints. She is a hypocrite and should be fired. Overall the entirety of the reception was utter nonsense and does not live up to proper standards of how a hotel should be run. Absolutely nothing good about this hotel. There was definitely some illegal stuff happening here considering there was yelling outside the window all the time and the smell of weed. The fact that there were numerous young teens with no parents staying was a major red flag. Do not stay at this poor excuse of a hotel. There are probably better places...