The Park Plaza Riverbank fancies itself a nice hotel. Sadly, that could not be much father from the truth. Even a supremely well-situated location across from Parliament on the Thames River can’t salvage poor service and a generally worn down property.
Why is it that big chains spend all of their money on an opulent lobby leaving nothing for staff training and room maintenance? How is it that a hotel charging more than 400 pounds per night has “theft proof” hangers and charges for a bottle of water? Why is it that the eastern European staff is always indifferent to the fact that you, in fact, pay their salary? Why do chains like the Park Plaza worship the television?
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Room 941 is a river front suite with a great view of London. The view is particularly gorgeous at night. Room 941 also has scarred furniture, stained rugs, and two televisions blaring noise pollution into the scene as you enter. Cacophony does not mask the decay.
The bathroom is nicely designed and appointed but scaled with hard water stains which covered the glass shower. That may demote the shower down past plastic walmart shower rods (almost). The grossest thing of all? The lotion had been opened and used.
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With a decent staff, we could overlook these maintenance details. But that is not how it is meant to be. Instead the staff is indifferent, undertrained, and unwilling to solve problems. Case in point the first: we arrived way early and our rooms were not ready (happens all the time). However, convincing the bell staff to take our suitcases up to our rooms when they were ready was like moving rocks. And then, they lost my suitcase somewhere during the process (I was out running between meetings in the city) and had no idea what to do to find it. My colleague and I were forced to escalate to the duty manager (a really nice guy named Mario Garcia-Vao who wields no power whatsoever to make things right).
Just for kicks, a second story: Whatever you do, don’t try to get a drink or a power adapter at the business center without your room key sleeve (something it turns out you don’t have if you can’t check in yet). And just try getting the Berzerkistan-trained bureaucrat to adjust for reality instead of sticking obstinately with policy. Hah. It has been many years since I have experienced such a terrible staff. Even the bar waitresses were awful and unwilling to play creatively. (On the other hand, the bartender had fun making a Seelbach or three. Learn something from a guest?! Horrors.)
London was certainly not the best of the six cities in this otherwise exquisite ten day tour. The restaurant we went to—Gaucho—was too hip for its own good and clearly run to maximize throughput and tabletop revenue. In my little world you do NOT interrupt a story at the table to wave around cuts of uncooked meat. You do that after the story ends. Good food and great wine, but not worth the hassle. I guess I would rather have Argentinian food in Argentina.
Things ended on a mixed note at the Park Plaza. The pathetic limits of Mario Garcia-Vao’s power resulted in a “massive” 38 pound discount applied to my friends’ room and a bottle of grocery store wine. At least Mario’s note was nice. In final analysis, this is absolutely unacceptable in my view and a really worse than doing nothing. You can bet I will go up the chain with my thoughts on this one. I’ll keep you posted. [ed. See the comments.] On the other hand, the driver who took me to the airport was a friendly ex-bodyguard with a hearty laugh and a good heart.
So an all time low one showerhead for the lowly Park Plaza Riverbank. Do not stay here. In fact, lets just scratch off the entire Park Plaza chain, what say mate?