City View Hotel Roman Road

Please avoid this hotel for your safety. The toilet and bed are broken, and the bed makes noise when you move. The door lock isn’t good either. There’s dust on the toilet mirror and dirt inside the toilet, and the person at the counter is rude. Everything is very bad.

Chess on the reception desk gives the place a more refined feel than you'd expect from an east London hotel. The staff were very particular about freshening the air, using Febreze as deodorant and air freshener, and I liked seeing that attention to the environment and carbon footprint. Great stay, 5/5, would recommend.

The room was damp, smelly and filthy, with a tiny en suite that was basically a toilet and wet room shower. Its only window looked into an internal corridor. I was given a partial refund, though I felt the whole stay should have been refunded. My room was beside reception, so there was loud talking outside it, then a man kicking off at 3:30 am badly enough that police were called. You have to leave the huge key at the reception desk when you go out, right by the entrance. The door was often left on the latch and reception was unmanned. Given the area, that made me uneasy. Avoid it if you want to feel safe or get an uninterrupted night's sleep. It's cheap for a reason.

For £40, this did the job for my one night in London. I could check in any time before midnight, and the tube station was a five minute walk away. McDonald's was about ten minutes away, handy for a quick dinner. The room was small but perfectly okay, and they'd left the window open with the fan running full blast, so it was nice and warm. The receptionist was friendly enough when I arrived, and pointed out a leak near my room. The shared bathroom was tiny and pretty gross that evening, though it had been cleaned by morning. It serves at least five or six rooms, which made me a bit stressed, but it was honestly fine. Not somewhere I'd choose for a holiday, but I'd stay again for a quick overnight visit.