Hilton London Green Park vs. Hilton London Hyde Park: Night & Day

Over the last two weeks, I had the opportunity to stay in both the Hilton London Green Park and the Hilton London Hyde Park. The two are sister properties and the differences are likenight and day. The following is my full review of both.

Hilton London Green Park Hotel

The Hilton London Green Park hotel is located just off of Park Lane in the Mayfair neighborhood. The hotel calls a 1730s Gregorian-style town house home. Even though the building is historic it is well maintained both inside and out. The hotel is about 3 blocks from the Green Park Tube station which makes getting around very convenient. There is a definite charm that you can feel at the Hilton Green Park – from the décor to the architecture to the ambiance, you’ll enjoy what the hotel has to offer.

Check-in

I arrived early, about 7am, and checked in right away. The process was quick and easy. My room wasn’t ready so the hotel stored my bags and I headed off to work for the day. When I arrived back at the hotel in the afternoon, I simply showed my ID at the front desk, got my keys and headed straight to my room. A bellman was right behind me with my suitcase that had been stored.

The Room

The room I was assigned was a deluxe king room on the first floor of the hotel (which was actually the second level) very close to an elevator and some steps. The room was a good size and had a king sized bed, small lounge chair in front of the bed, a desk and chair, small refrigerator, and TV. The bathroom was large but the layout was odd. There was a combined bath/shower, a sink and toilet and two French doors that could be opened partially. There was a small balcony – it didn’t look like the balcony could be used as there was tons of broken tile and rocks (most likely the reason the doors could only partially open.) The view from the bathroom and bedroom were of the street and hotel directly across the way. I chose to keep the blinds drawn most of time to maintain privacy. The room was clean and comfortable and the space was adequate.

The Hotel

There was a bar and restaurant in the hotel. The bar was very busy on Friday night. I decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant. There were 3 tables of two people each seated in the restaurant and the waiter who was also serving as host asked me to have a seat in the bar until a table was ready. That seemed odd since I could count about 8 open tables in my line of sight. I waited a few minutes and then wandered back over to the restaurant. The host/waiter showed me to a table. A second waiter seemed to suddenly appear and took my drink and dinner order. I ordered a small Caesar salad and mushroom Gnocchi. The salad was average – what you’d expect from a Caesar salad, but nothing special. The Gnocchi was very good and I enjoyed it quite a bit. After dinner I was stuffed and couldn’t even look at the dessert menu. The service was good, but the two servers seemed a little overwhelmed as the restaurant got quite busy. At some point, a manager appeared and helped at the host stand and with providing/collecting checks. The restaurant is expensive, but a good option if you can’t get out of the hotel.

The entire staff was very helpful and responsive to requests. The hotel offers wifi in all rooms and while I could easily connect from my laptop, I could not get my iPad to connect to the wifi. The hotel offered to send someone to the room, but no one ever showed up. That was only one request that I made that never got addressed and the following day I forgot to follow-up. I just used my laptop during my stay.

Overall

I really enjoyed the hotel and would definitely stay again. The rooms were nice, the staff was helpful and the location was great. The Hilton Green Park Hotel is like day compared to the Hilton London Hyde Park Hotel which is like night in comparison .

Hotel Lobby and reception


The room



Entry

The Hilton London Hyde Park

I have already written about the issues I experienced with check-in at this hotel, so I won’t go into it again here. This review will focus on the hotel itself. The hotel was built in 1907 and opened as the Colburg Court Hotel.

The room(s)

I changed rooms several times at this hotel.
The first room I was shown as a single room with a twin bed and shower. There was barely enough room to open my suitcase in the room. I decided not to stay in the room because after 9 days I think I would have felt cramped. The second room was lager and had a double bed but only had a bathtub. The floor was stained and the bathtub was rusty. The third room I had was much larger than first two and at first glance seemed to be in better condition. I quickly found that the room hadn’t been fully cleaned. There was a candy wrapper (or some sort of wrapper) in the couch. In the bathroom, there was a crumpled towel next to the sink and unwrapped soap in the soap dish. The hotels GM had come up to the room and was able to see the ½ cleaned room. The housekeeper was in the room immediately and cleaned the bathroom and couch. After the these issue were taken care of, the room was fine but as with the rest of the hotel, it was not well maintained.

The paint was chipping and peeling, there were stains on the doors, the bathroom ceiling had what I suspect was mold or mildew on it. The shower tiles were chipped and in need of a deep cleaning.

A colleague who was also at the hotel described the bed as “sleeping on a table.” He also hit the nail on the head when he said that the best thing about the hotel were the towels and heated towel rack. I totally agree, the hotel did have nice towels and having them heated was a nice touch.

The hotel

The hotel is quite old and has not been well maintained so it shows its age. It is apparently on the list of historic buildings and so the management team explained that many things couldn’t be changed. I understand that historic buildings can’t be changed, but that doesn’t mean that the hotel needs to be run down and gloomy. New carpet, a fresh coat of paint and some minor repairs would make all the difference in the world.

Breakfast was served in the restaurant located on the lower level of the hotel. There was a bar area and restaurant that were typically very full. Breakfast was okay, they had a selection of hot foods, cold selections and cereal and breads. I took advantage of the breakfast the first few days, but quickly found it was easier to pick up a muffin at Starbucks on the way to the office. My colleagues all took advantage of the breakfast while we were there.

There were two small elevators in the hotel that could fit 4 people without luggage, maybe 2 people with luggage. So many people took the stairs if their room was on the first few levels. The final room I ended up in was on the 5th floor and so I waited for the elevator most days – except the day that we had the fire alarm, that day I walked down the stairs with all the other guests.

Service

The hotel staff was not very helpful. If you wanted to be sure a request would be honored or even just followed up on, you had to speak with a manager. The Duty Manger, named Aaron, was the saving grace of the hotel. If it weren’t for him, I would have checked out early. To give you an example, I requested not to get the newspaper delivered to my room. Every single day the newspaper was delivered. For seven straight days I would bring the paper to the front desk and point out that I had requested no newspaper. It wasn’t until the 7th day when I talked to Aaron that the newspaper delivery was stopped. 7 requests to hotel staff to simply stop the newspaper and that couldn’t be accomplished without the mangers involvement. The non-management staff at the Hilton London Hyde Park is a terrible reflection on the hotel and left a horrible impression with me.

Overall

I was impressed with the efforts that the duty manager, Aaron, and the front of house manger, Stephen went to to fix things during my stay. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the staff didn’t seem to care about customer service. The hotel is old and needs to be refurbished and well maintained. The Green Park Hotel, which is housed in a much older building, seems to maintain the property while the Hyde Park location doesn’t seem to put the same effort into maintenance. Considering the two are “sister” properties you would think they’d have similar attention to detail – but they don’t.

If you have to stay in London, I would recommend the Hilton London Green Park and I would not stay at the Hilton London Hyde Park again.

Hotel Exterior

Stained Floors

Second room & phone w/missing buttons

Third room (the largest of all the rooms)

Sink with used towel and opened soap & dirty, stained door



Mildew/Mold on the bathroom ceiling & chipped paint

Chipped, dirty tiles & chipped ceiling

5 Comments on "Hilton London Green Park vs. Hilton London Hyde Park: Night & Day"

  1. Check out the Waldorf Hilton very Nice!!

  2. Thanks. I stayed at Hilton Green Park in Dec. and agree its a very nice, clean and friendly hotel. Also very convenient to the tube and walking. Never stayed at Hyde Park hilton and very thankful for your honest review.

  3. Yep, they are night and day. As you were recently status matched to Gold just prior to your trip, what Gold benefits enhanced each of your stays over what a non-Gold would have received. I know that many properties in Europe include breakfast with all room rates, etc. Have a great day! 🙂

  4. @Bill in DC, wish I had the budget for the Waldorf! That would be lovely.

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