London – Brent (Borough of) – Wembley – Ibis Wembley
The Accor offer that I wrote about the other day appears to be working, so this stay cost me around £16 for the night, which I don’t think is too bad at all. It’s located near to Wembley Stadium and just a short walk away from the underground, so it’s all convenient to get to. I wasn’t a fan of their reception desk though, it’s in a strange place tucked into a corner which isn’t immediately obvious and it’s not near the bar and so their staff need to keep traipsing over. But, to be fair, I have more things in life to worry about than the design of hotels and where they’ve put the reception desk. Although I’ve now written about it, so perhaps I don’t. Anyway, I digress.
This is a standard Ibis room and was clean and comfortable. The television, which had the annoying habit of switching itself on randomly, allowed me to cast my phone so that I could watch Netflix on it. I don’t normally ever switch the television on in hotels rooms (I didn’t have a choice here since it seemed to like being on, but perhaps it needed the company) so this was a nice little change.
The view from my hotel room, which was on the top floor.
I didn’t have breakfast, but this sounds a little bland and the choice of eggs is unnecessarily limited and where’s the bacon? There’s no religious sensibility here, they were serving it until a few months ago. Anyway, breakfast is too much hassle at the moment, so I went to get a free smoothie from Pret instead with my subscription.
The choice of beers, which was adequate if not exceptional. The Midway IPA from Goose Island was decent enough though, although if you’re paying for it then it’s pricey at £5.75 a pint. I was pleased to get mine free as a welcome drink and also pleased to have a choice of most drinks.
The bar area, all clean and organised, with a few customers to the right out of my photo. The staff here were excellent, friendly and helpful, everything was done efficiently and without unnecessary delay. The hotel was quiet internally and externally, although I can’t imagine that they filled that many of their 210 rooms. The hotel picks up a fair number of negative reviews that I would describe as quite picky for a three-star hotel, but I suspect this is because when an event or match is on at Wembley then the price of rooms soars, so expectations rightfully increase.
I liked the clearly exasperated response from the manager to one grumbling review about the room being too small:
“I appreciate that you felt the room was too small; regrettably this is not something we are able to change easily.”
Anyway, as a hotel, I liked this one, which is fortunate as I’m going back there tomorrow….
