| Hotel Rating: |  | | Reviews: 4 | Photos: 1 | | 40 Liverpool St |
 | London Andaz London Reviews | 1 - 4 of 4 |  |
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 | Andaz London: One hotel to rule them all...
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This excellent hotel specialising in 'casual luxury’ hosts a very wide selection of restaurants doing pub food, seafood, sushi as well as having a champagne bar. The hotel is big with over 250 rooms and has a lot of history. It was called back in 1884 the Great Eastern and it is handily located for any eastern UK business traveller or if you’re flying to Stansted it’s right next to Liverpool Street Station.
The Andaz building was originally created by Charles Barry, who designed the Houses of Parliament. I guess he’d not have thought that 100 years later, it would be transformed to a hotel vision of the future but with his original surround?
What I personally love is the cyberpunk feel. You walk in, people come up to you in casual formal dress with a touchpad PDA, you can then go to a bar and they’ll order your food on the pad, check you in and ask you what you’d like to do! It’s like a real-life avatar. I loved the experience. The cool thing is, if you travel around like I do, you know that there’s 1 or 2 porters - STOP for the hotel. Here each employee is everything, porter, local guide, room service so there’s no hanging around!
If you love art or comedy it is ideally located next to trendy London scenes such as Shoreditch and Hoxton. The hotel guests artists throughout the interior and has a great monthly comedy night that is only 5 quid to get into. I repeat just 5 quid. There’s other comedy clubs nearby, but none that beats a classy venue nor that price! The night is called Sabotage and attracts on occasions some very BIG names!
Inside the rooms, each room is different and the bathrooms, like the helpers or andaz friend’s are state-of-the-art. The beds were very comfortable. Having lived outside London for years it was actually a pleasure going back. I loved the casual luxury phillosophy…. Before I forget, you can also rent out ipods and they have selected playlists from local people. Great idea!
I’d recommend the weekends and quite often they have special rates as well!
ipod rental, excellent location [to stansted, shoreditch art galleries, the Globe].
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The hotel looks great, the rooms are great, but the treatment of customers is dire.
I walked in off the street and was quoted a rate of GBP315. There was no mention of any further taxes (VAT) to pay, apart from in the small print of the form I was then asked to sign at check in (which was not bought to my attention in any way).
On checking out, I found I had been charged 17.5% VAT on the room rate I had been quoted, making the bill GBP370, hardly a steal for one night's accomodation!
The staff were completely uninterested in my view that I had been mislead as to the total price of the room, and did nothing to sort the matter out. In fact, a letter to the management met with the same response - I should have read the form! There was no admission that failing to make it clear to the guest that VAT would be payable on top of the room rate was perhaps not very customer friendly. Clearly repeat business is not something the GEH need or require.
GO somewhere else where you will be treated with more respect.
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