The Mayfair Townhouse — Hotel in London

Service, service, service. From the welcome at the front door, reception and concierge on arrival, you can immediately tell the ‘The Mayfair Townhouse’ is part of the family of hotels that includes Cliveden. Informal formality is the best description, the staff just want your stay to be perfect and nothing is too much trouble.

Arriving early on a Friday afternoon on the second day of the hotel being open, we were upgraded to an Executive double and shown to our room. Having known the hotel in a previous life when I used to work in the area, any signs of the Hilton Green Park have now totally disappeared and the hotel has been gutted top to bottom, reconfigured and refurbished. The word ‘whimsical’, used on the web site, is wonderfully apt. The choice of colours, patterns, textures, and pictures throughout the rooms and common areas work beautifully, creating a ‘dandy’ atmosphere.

Our room had a wonderfully comfortable King bed, fantastic air cooling / heating system, complimentary in room minibar with non-alcoholic drinks and nibbles including candy and a bathroom with the fluffiest towels and dressing gowns (we think it was their first use) and wonderful Noble Isle products. As it’s the little things that we often remember, the room – as did other parts of the hotel – has hand sanitizer from the Nobler Isle Rhubard Rhubarb collection helping to make sanitizing a joy (described as ‘A bittersweet fragrance reminiscent of the dewy wake-up of a Yorkshire spring, with cleansing extract of ‘forced’ rhubarb and notes of juniper berry and muddled rosemary’).

Friday afternoon was spent wandering up to Oxford Street, down Old Bond Street and finding ‘Hush’, an old favourite, for a drink and ‘substantial’ bite before walking round and seeing the festive lights and getting back to our room late afternoon. A delicious touch, was the jar of fresh macarons that had appeared in our room, soon consumed...

After a rest, bath and freshen we headed along Piccadilly and around Mayfair, finding a great Italian restaurant for supper. It was after the bath we discovered the heated wall next to the towel rails that 'magically' dried them and kept the bathroom pretty much condensation free.

On Saturday we were a little sluggish, and as breakfast is served to 11 am at the weekend this didn't matter! We enjoyed a range of the breakfast menu in the lower ground floor area which was all provided through table service (no breakfast buffet to ensure we were Covid secure). From fresh fruit with natural yogurt, sourdough toast, eggs benedict, eggs and oodles of coffee, tea and water. Feeling a bit continental, I asked for some toast and cheese and they were most helpful, finding a couple of very palatable soft cheeses.

Checking out about noon, a crisp and sunny day inspired us to have a walk through Green and St James’s Royal Parks – which are just at the end of the road) down to Westminster and across to the Southbank before working our way home. A brilliant 24 hour break as we emerge from lockdown 2.0 to re-introduce us to the world. Thank you to the staff for a wonderful stay.

The only things that were tricky were totally out of the hotel’s control. First, and rightly, strong ‘Covid secure’ measures and compliance; Tier 2 in our one night stay so no drinks without food and getting back to the hotel at 9.55 pm hoping to have a drink with something ‘substantial’ was not our best idea, it wasn’t possible. Second, the hotel is right next to a massive demolition site taking down the old ‘In and out’ club getting the site ready for a brand-new luxury hotel on Piccadilly that will overlook Green Park. This noise nuisance was not half as bad as we thought it might be, our room had excellent double glazing and we were woken by the noise of tipper trucks or skips being changed at 8.30 am, the official start time for building works to resume.

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Attractive hotel and finished to a luxury standard, bedrooms nice but not overly special, bed was lovely, beautiful shower, air con great, reception friendly and maltesers in complimentary mini bar. Problems were mainly service in bar/restaurant and breakfast. 1 hour for lunch food, staff refusing to take our order when we tried to get service. Other tables got complimentary nibbles with their drinks, we got nothing and eventually asked why and got some. Next morning 20 mins for a cup of tea at breakfast and the most unforgivable thing...I sat at breakfast and had a waiter bring food to the next table that hadn't been cleared and he put their dirty dishes on my table to serve their food!! The customer then added another half eaten dish on top! I said 'excuse me I'm actually sat here' and was ignored completely. Never in all my years. Gave feedback directly to hotel and they apologized and said next time we stay it will be better. Room issues... No curtains (our friends in same room grade next door had curtains) and the black out blinds were fine but hadn't been installed correctly so shards of light were in your face in the morning. Also the black out blinds frame overlaid the window and was badly installed so the window was unopenable, despite them adding a security feature to stop you opening too wide (chance would be a fine thing). Our friends bathroom was also a third bigger and as I said, same room grade and we booked both the rooms. Never nice to find out you got lesser than other guests paying the same. My takeaways are that this is not a place to eat but nice for cocktails before dinner. There are not really amenities like a lobby, you have to be in the bar as you come in. It's huge (almost 200 rooms) and perhaps that's why the rooms feel a bit mass production. You feel the newness pains with the service, the dodgy installations, and the lighting that flickered for our whole stay (not all the lights...some ...In the bedroom, bar, breakfast... Flickering! Final thing... Our friends were offered turn down service at check in, we weren't. So when they told us we requested it on the way out to dinner (standard time to do turndown right? Not that I had to ask anywhere before). Anyway we got a bit of push back about staff probably having gone home... But alas they sent somebody while we were out (got the impression it wasn't the usual team though... Couple packets of slippers randomly on the floor two thirds of the way down the bed, water by bed and blinds closed.) So most of these things are small, but the overwhelming feeling was that I was testing a product in dress rehearsal and although nice didn't leave me with a warm feeling for the place, any sense of connection or sense of being somewhere special. Was looking for a reason to want to go back, but with many things on offer in London it would have to be a very very good deal to actually entice...

From the moment we arrived and one of the concierge team, Lee, spotted us leaving our taxi with suitcases to the day we checked out and couldn’t persuade the front of house ladies not to run to the end of the road to flag down an available cab, the service experienced at Mayfair Townhouse was warm, friendly and the kind of relaxed professionalism, without the over-theatrical stuffiness of other highly star rated establishments, which makes you want to return again and again. As the trip was to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday we were very impressed with the effort the team had gone too. We had a fun welcome message amusingly written across our bedroom mirror and a lovely bottle of quality Prosecco with delicious cakes. We were very impressed by this as none of it was asked for, nor expected.

The accommodation is, as one would expect in London, relatively compact whilst being larger than many places I have stayed in the capital. However, the most important factors were all there and on-point. The bed was as large and as comfortable as one could wish for. The bathroom was lovely, with quality soaps and a clever air system which meant it never steamed up, no matter how hot your shower. This many seem like a minor benefit, however it meant we never had to worry about wash-bags etc. getting covered in that annoying condensation. The complimentary snacks in the room were high quality and very welcome.

We didn’t dine at the hotel during our stay however we enjoyed a couple of excellent cocktails, served with tasty complimentary snacks, in the bar. We requested a couple of cocktails which weren’t on the menu, which was no trouble at all. Upon ordering Margaritas, we asked if we could have them served without crushed ice (being our preference) which was no trouble at all. We were enticed by the suggestion of a spicy option, which was absolutely superb. The drinks were beautifully made and, again, the welcome and service were just right - that perfect mix of professionalism and friendliness.

We found Mayfair Townhouse to be an unassuming, modern establishment without the superficially impressive, yet unnecessary, grandiosity of other five star hotels. It has a boutique, homely feel, with an effortless professionalism that comes usually after many months of operation, not just a few weeks as we discovered to our surprise. The location is excellent, too. Mayfair Townhouse gets all the important things right and its a reason we will return again on...