The Thames

The decor was beautiful and the location was perfect. It was a really lovely, clean hotel, there was parking, and most of the staff were friendly. Thanks for a lovely stay. The internet was awful, which would usually not matter, but I picked this hotel with the internet in mind. The doors were another issue. Soft-close mechanisms would have helped us sleep, because the stairway doors and hotel room doors slam shut and disturbed us.

The views are lovely, but for the price I feel I wasted a lot of money, which is such a shame. We chose the hotel because it said it was new and improved, and I beg to differ. Our cot bed was broken for our newborn, and when I asked for a pimms, nobody knew how to make one. In the morning, hoping for a refreshing shower, we found there was no body wash or shower gel, and the shower was only a trickle. Breakfast was awful: it was cold, the milk was off, and oil was coming off the cheese. They'd run out of coffee and couldn't get me a fresh one, and there was no juice or cutlery. We've checked out today.

The views are stunning, and the staff went above and beyond to make us feel welcome. We had booked an executive king with river view and balcony as a family room, using the single sofa bed. The room was beautiful, the king bed very comfortable, and that sofa bed was the best I've tried. The hotel kitchen was being upgraded, so hot breakfast came from a pop-up street food van. The scrambled eggs were the best, cooked by a real chef! I hadn't realised there was a road between the hotel and the river, which took a little away from the balcony ambience at night and breakfast on the sunny patio in the morning.

The location was the only good thing. The room wasn't very clean, though the bathroom was nice. Staff were surly. A man in a wheelchair had to be helped down the stairs, and the receptionist didn't seem to care. Breakfast service was shocking. When I asked for the table to be cleaned, the server just looked at me blankly. The food was appalling, with cheap eggs and a very poor selection: only apples, oranges, beans, bacon and hash browns. Nothing green. They could do so much better for this location.