Let me start by saying that, in a long career as a global computer consultant, I have stayed at many hotels in the UK, Europe and the USA, and, without doubt, the Chase Lodge Hotel at Kingston upon Thames, in the UK, is the worst.
Let’s start with the location. The internet coverage implies that it is situated in the village of Hampton Wick, and that “it is hard to imagine, in the tranquil surroundings of Chase Lodge, that you are just a half-hour journey from Central London.”
The centre of the “village of Hampton Wick” is a busy traffic laden High Street running some twenty five yards from my single glazed bedroom window. The traffic noise is constant from very early morning to very early morning. It appears as a London suburb, and has no village atmosphere, indeed no resemblance to a village whatsoever.

There is no parking exclusive to the hotel and you have to commandeer a residents parking bay if you are lucky.

The hotel is accessed by entering a key into a coded security lock on the front door.

Upon entering my room I found the bed unmade and my bag was moved by a surly (German, I think) guy in his mid-twenties.

The phone in my room was not connected, so back to the bar to ask the same guy, who was now running the bar.

He received instructions, from deep within, and turned his hand to phone fixing. Successfully.

There was no receptionist at the reception desk after 6.00pm

After watching the poor reception on the ITV channel I ventured to Wickers restaurant, accessed from within the hotel. I ordered a bottle of Stella beer which was served, without a glass, by my phone fixer.
I ordered a plain medium-rare fillet steak (tenderloin for my American cousins) with salad. The steak arrived medium but had been pan-fried in oil, not grilled. The steak had absorbed the oil and tasted of nothing else.

I returned to my room and eventually fell asleep, in spite of the traffic noise.

In the morning after showering with a first class shower, with oceans of hot water, I ordered breakfast from and was served by my phone fixer. I ordered bacon with tomatoes, as I always do when working away from home. I have certainly never been served anything like this. On a large white plate was one small cold rasher of bacon with a white encrustation. To keep it company was one small, cold, half tomato which had no skin on, and thus absorbed the same cooking oil as my steak. The coffee was excellent.

There were no single rooms available at sixty six pounds and so I was charged eighty five pounds for the use of a small double. The room only had space for a single chair, and if a couple were occupying it then one person would have to sit on the bed. There was no dressing table.

The biggest insult of all came when I arrived at my place of business in the morning. I had tried on three occasions, the previous evening, to phone the guy I was meeting, from my hotel room. I missed his mobile each time but it retained the hotel phone number within it. The matter was urgent. Imagine my disgust when he told me, at my morning meeting, that he had returned the call on two occasions, only to be told each time that the hotel staff were too busy to put through the calls. There were two diners, including myself in the restaurant at the time of the attempted calls.

The hotel appears to partly aim itself at the American tourist market naming its rooms Henry VIII etc. If you are an American reading this review, who has already visited, I can only apologise. If you haven’t visited, then don’t.

If you do decide to try it, my suggestion is to pay only for a shower, and a coffee, and move on.    []

Food: -   Service: -   Ambiance: -   Overall: -

     ­Anonymous