Andaz London

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!

Unique Quality: ipod rental, excellent location [to stansted, shoreditch art galleries, the Globe].

Directions: Next to Liverpool Street Station

The Great Eastern is a funky, modern hotel attached to the Liverpool Street train station in downtown London. The property is very convenient to the financial center of the city and is easy to get into and away from with access to both trains and the underground.

Unique Quality: When arriving the building itself is a giant, almost daunting, grey stone. When you hit the lobby, the warm wood and neon lights let you know that you're in an upscale property. The front desk staff is second to none with great attention to detail down to the matching Great Eastern cuff links.

The rooms are well appointed with multitone wood, nice amenities and cool features like pocket doors for the bath. The elevator lobbies on upper floors allow you to view down to a first floor lounge area.

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.

A grand hotel that was originally built in Victorian times. It was totally re-vamped about six years and has 267 rooms that kept the best of the old and added the convenience we want from the new. Beautiful just to look at from the point of view of both Victorian and modern architecture, it has four good restaurants as well! Even the flower arrangements are works of art.

Unique Quality: Expensive, but it was the only hotel in the Square Mile unitl very recently and has a great past and a great location. Really nice people there.

I'm going to post some more photos of the place in What to See!

Directions: Right outside the station but you don't hear the noise!