Double Trouble at Comfort Inn & Suites London Kings Cross St Pancras

While there were some issues with Comfort Inn & Suites London Kings Cross St Pancras, they were all issues that would not be a major concern to me. What made for a miserable 5 nights was the fact that I booked a Double Bed room in London. I don’t recall ever booking a double bed in the past decade when Kelley and I were traveling together. And definitely not for a hotel room in the UK, where bed sizes are smaller than the rest of Europe and the USA.

A Double Bed in the UK is only 4.5 feet wide and a King bed can be as small as 5 feet wide in London. These are equivalent to a U.S. Full size bed 4.5 ft and U.S. Queen bed 5 ft wide. That is why I typically book two single beds for London hotel stays. Unfortunately, the Double Bed detail went unnoticed by me when I booked Comfort Inn & Suites Kings Cross St Pancras for five nights of our London trip in February. I was too focused on the other stated room amenities of a microwave and refrigerator. The idea of hot meals and cold beer were the details I focused on when booking the hotel.

I also missed the reservation detail for a ‘Standard Room’ rather than a suite when I made my reward stay booking.

The hotel is managed by St Pancras Hotel Group, which appears to run several hotels in these townhouses. The hotel section I stayed at seemed to have around 14 rooms, although the Choice Hotels website states the property is 63 rooms. Breakfast, included on my reward stay reservation, was actually in an adjacent building requiring the front desk person to let me in each morning I went for breakfast. Given the sparse breakfast service, I only went to the breakfast room two of the five mornings at the hotel.

Location *****

Room ***

Breakfast *

Value ***** (12,000 Choice Privileges points per night).

Hotel Location

Comfort Inn & Suites Kings Cross St Pancras is only a few minutes walk from Kings Cross St Pancras Underground Station with direct connections to London Heathrow on the Piccadilly line. The neighborhood has several grocery stores, numerous restaurants and pubs and several museums, including the British Library and British Museum within 10 to 20 minutes walk. In fact, we walked to most places we visited when sightseeing and pubbing around central London, like from the hotel to Camden Town and from the hotel to Trafalgar Square.

Hotel Lobby

There is a computer station in the lobby with a couch and a bookcase with some books for guests to read. Our room Suite 8 on Floor 1 was one set of steps up or an elevator ride, then a few steps down.

Suite 8

Basically, the width of the room was about 8 feet, sufficient for a 4.5 ft wide double bed and two nightstands. There was barely enough room to move between the desk and the end of the bed, Too little room for a desk chair. In fact there were no chairs in the room.

Upon learning the first morning that the breakfast room was not being used for hotel breakfast service and seeing a dozen chairs in the basement level room, I asked for one of the chairs to be brought to my room and placed it in the space where the luggage rack is positioned in the photo above.

Water pressure and temperature were fine for our stay.

Complaints:

Dirty Dishes

The room had two sets of dishes, for example two bowls, two plates, two cups, two knives, two forks and two spoons. What the room did not have was a dish towel. This became apparent when I reached into the cabinet for a plate to find it greasy and unwashed from a previous guest stay. I went to the desk for a spare hand towel and washed all the dishes in the cupboard.

Construction Work

The first three mornings of our five night stay had building construction work directly outside our window starting at 9am with drilling and hammering. Certainly not the first time I encountered construction work while staying in a London hotel, but probably the closest proximity I have slept to a construction site in London.

Free Continental Breakfast, aka breakfast ultra-lite

At check-in there was no mention by the receptionist of breakfast. The first morning of our stay I walked down to the breakfast room in the basement to find nobody there and no fresh food around. There was a large can of Heineken on the counter I considered pocketing, but didn’t.

At the recpetion desk I asked about breakfast and then was taken outside to the next door on the right side of the Comfort Suite lobby entrance. A walk down the hallway and downstaris led to a small breakfast room with six small tables.

Breakfast was orange juice, coffee or tea in your own little pot and a rack of toast from the kitchen. Otherwise the only other items to eat were dry cereals. There was butter, jam and nutella. No fruit and no yogurt and no other breads or pastries.

I only returned for breakfast on our last morning when I wanted out of the bedroom for a pot of coffee. Kelley never saw the breakfast room during our stay. I loaded our room refrigerator with milk, yogurt, cheese, turkey, hummus, broccoli and soups. And plenty of beer.

Comfort Inn & Suites Kings Cross St Pancras

I would definitely return to this hotel again if traveling on my own or if there was a room with two single beds available on points when reward rates are low. This hotel is a relative bargain for stays through June 30. Although, I must point out that next to Quality Inn Hampstead, this hotel looks to be the most difficult hotel in London for finding Choice Privileges reward nights.

I redeemed 60,000 points for a Sunday to Friday stay when the room rate was £184.92 per night/$236.24 USD. This stay used up most of my remaining points of the 267,000 points I purchased on May 15, 2019 during the U.S. Travel Association Daily Getaways and Kids First Auction. I paid an average $5.10 per 1,000 points making my reward night cost $61.20 per night for this 5-night London stay at Comfort Inn & Suites King’s Cross-St. Pancras London Hotel.