Travelodge London Central Euston — Hotel in London

Here is your routine reminder to never book with Travelodge if you value your health, wallet, and time.

I booked a 2 night stay at Travelodge London Central Euston a month in advance only to be told the night that I arrived for check in that they have overbooked that hotel as this is their standard operating procedure to operate like an airline, hedging on the chance that not all reservations will check in. No one reached out to me prior to this. This was almost midnight at this point.

After an hour, receptionist informed me that none of the neighboring Travelodges had a room available for 2 night stay, so I was forced to stay at Travelodge Covent Garden then come back to Euston the next morning. Pain in the ass, but not the end of the world.

When I finally checked in to Travelodge Covent Garden, it was already 2:30AM. I discovered mold on the ceiling panels of the bathroom along with urine stains on the toilet seat. As I was already exhausted and frustrated from a full day of travel and having to deal with being overbooked, I decided to just inform the staff in the morning.

I informed the manager of the condition of my room in the morning and was simply offered breakfast and a 30% off voucher to book with Travelodge again to compensate for the sorry state of my room and for being bumped to another hotel (which why would I want either of these things after my experience with them). I requested a refund for my booking and was directed to a defunct customer service chat. By the time I finished checking out of Covent Garden and checking into Euston that morning, my half of my day was gone, ruining my itinerary. I also came to notice my bed at Euston very strongly smelled like mildew. I requested all of the sheets and pillows to be changed out, but was told they had no room service staff available. They just gave me a random assortment of sheets and blankets... which were stained and also smelled like mildew. It felt disgusting that my hard-earned holiday was screwed over by a greedy and unethical hotel chain.

At both establishments, I was not able to get any real customer service help, both due to a lack of training of their reception team and the lack of customer service resources available to both the staff and the customer. Travelodge makes it exceedingly difficult for customers to reach them. I find it extremely hard to believe they do not even have a customer service number for customers to reach out to to get faster and proper help from their customer service team. Their dysfunctional chat function on their website with consistently "0 agents available" does not count as a working customer service communications channel, no matter how much they try to convince you that it works.

I decided then to submit a full customer support ticket asking for a refund for my booking citing being overbooked, not having prior communication about this, and the disgusting condition of my "equal accommodation at nearby hotel". They finally reached back out after several hours and tried to put it on me for not informing their "well trained" reception team at Covent Garden of my revolting room state because the reception team is there to "resolve it then and there". Well, excuse me for not wanting to deal with your team at 3AM when that's what I did for the last 3 hours and all I wanted to do was sleep. They then offered a measly £75 refund and closed my ticket.

I'm not usually one to write scathing reviews or complain too much about simple mistakes, but since when was it acceptable to intentionally overbook hotels and ruin your customer's travel plans, then put them in a room with health hazards? Absolutely abhorrent business practices by Travelodge and the lack of customer service is astounding. Let my vacation be the last one they ruin and NEVER BOOK WITH THEM.

If you are having trouble with their customer service, remember you can always attempt a credit card charge back if you used a CC to book and you are can absolutely report their establishments to higher authorities if you need...

Starting with the positives: the location is excellent and the water pressure in the shower is superlative (strong enough to strip paint). Negatives (there are so many): On arrival another family were trying to solve the problem with adjoining rooms not being together before we were told that there were no family rooms available. The manager came back from downstairs (yes, the rooms are in the basement) to say that the room was in fact ready, but the other 2 family rooms were without power. The whole basement level stank, absolutely stank, of damp. The room supports two beds (hence the family room) but it is tiny. The bathroom is small, with a shower that is so cramped that I was claustrophobic. The shower pressure was a dream. The wifi, which I had to pay for, didn't work at all. On complaining to the manager, she said that other guests had complained of the same thing, but there was nothing she could do about it until the following day as no one would come out to fix the issue. There would be no refund because the fault hadn't been determined; the problem could be my phone. Having spent 10 days previously staying in hotels in Ireland, I had great expectations for the unlimited breakfast. Well, I was wrong. I have never returned so much food, or seen other guests return food like that morning. The vegetarian sausages were virtually inedible because they were overcooked, dry (like cooked cardboard), tasteless and with a sawdust texture. The hash browns were mushy, thickly made, probably undercooked from frozen, and again repulsively tasteless. The pork sausages (back to sausages) were also overcooked, dry and tasteless. No amount of HP sauce made them palatable. If you thought that was the end of food issues, you'd be wrong. The bagels ran out because so many were sent back to the kitchen; apparently they were stale (I gave up on the food by this stage). The final insult to the guests was (probably still is) the coffee. The machine made coffee was, without doubt, the worst cup of coffee that I have ever been served. Vile is the adjective that springs to mind. While the machine may have needed a clean, the awful flavour could only come from the beans. I am speculating, but it's probable that those beans were very cheap and quite possibly stale (like the bagels). Honestly, after 1 sip I gave up. How can a machine mess up coffee? There are many people who disparage automatic coffee machines, but they produce consistently acceptable coffee. The Travelodge Euston coffee machine somehow managed to make a cup of dross. If this had been the cheapest hotel of my stay, this review would probably be less harsh. Sadly this was not a bargain hotel in a good location. This room cost £139 for the night plus WiFi!...

Awful night stay at the Travelodge on Friday 20th June during the heatwave. We stayed on the ground floor in Room 19 which had faulty air con which only gave out warm air despite it being on the coldest setting possible. This was during the heatwave where the temperature was in the high 20s. The aircon in this hotel should be checked and made sure they are working before allowing people to stay in rooms where the windows do not open! We felt like we were going to pass out during the night from the heat. We asked reception if we could change rooms and they told us it was not possible as there were no rooms available. The only solution was to provide an additional desk fan. We were then given an entire new sealed fan which we had to build together ourselves. At this point it was getting very late and we were so exhausted and overheated we asked reception to come to the room and help build the fan and check our air con again. Whilst in our room he checked our air con again and agreed it wasn’t working and only blowing out warm air. He told us to contact reception in the morning and he put a note on our booking of the fault. We had to change the positions of the beds and sleep with our heads at the bottom, just to feel a faint breeze from the fans as they had to be plugged in so far from the beds. This resulted in disrupted sleep with both of us barely getting 3 hours of rest. We then went to reception in the morning where management offered us a £44 evoucher which i think is a bit of an insult considering we paid £172.99 for the room which was not at all satisfactory for a comfortable nights sleep. We declined this offer. There didn’t seem to be much care in sorting the issue of the faulty air con, and we were then told they have had this issue in other rooms too. This should be a priority to be fixed especially in this weather and alternate resolutions offered if it can’t be fixed.

We took this matter further and have now only been offered £50 refunded back which they think is acceptable. All you do is take money which doesn’t seem to be going to much good use as you haven’t fixed the air cons in the hotel. So what are you actually doing with it? Never staying at a...