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Review: The Westminster London, a Hilton Curio Collection hotel (ex-DoubleTree)

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This is our review of The Westminster London hotel.

Formerly the DoubleTree Westminster, the hotel has undergone a significant refurbishment over the winter and has opted to swap brands to Curio Collection by Hilton.

Curio is a brand aimed at high-end hotels which want to be part of the Hilton Honors ecosystem without having to follow a specific brand manual. They are usually more boutique-y than you would otherwise find in a Hilton or DoubleTree branded hotel.

Review: The Westminster London, a Hilton Curio Collection hotel

Hilton invited us to take a look at The Westminster now that it has (almost) finished its renovation works, with final touches to some floors still being made.

The hotel website is here.

Location

The Westminster London is located just off Millbank and Lambeth Bridge, down the road from Tate Britain:

Westminster London location

The area itself is fairly quiet, filled with residential and office blocks, but you can Boris bike to Soho and the West End within 15 minutes or so.

Whilst it has the styling of a boutique hotel, it’s hard to call The Westminster ’boutique’ in practice. There are 464 rooms across 12 floors. Readers with long memories will know that this originally opened as a ‘Mint’ hotel, the chain famous for putting candy-coloured iMac computers in every room.

The Westminster London hotel exterior

Check in

First impressions of the lobby are good:

The Westminster London hotel lobby

My check-in was quick and easy, although things are still very quiet. The Westminster London definitely feels tourist rather than business-oriented and tourism to the UK is still way down.

The Westminster London hotel checkin

The check-in staff acknowledged my Hilton Gold status.

The unifying artistic theme of the hotel is a range of playful portraits like this:

The Westminster London hotel artwork

Room

I was given a room on the 11th floor, a ‘Queen Premium Corner Room’. This is currently the highest category room at The Westminster London, with a number of suites still being finished.

Whilst the room footprint was a fairly standard rectangle, the room is laid out in a unique and innovative way. Rather than walking down a dim corridor past a bathroom to the bed, The Westminster has merged the corridor and bathroom to create a far more open and welcoming layout that makes the space feel much larger than it is. Here is what you see when you enter:

The Westminster London hotel room

As you can see, a diagonal ‘corridor’ makes it way past a large corner wardrobe:

The Westminster London hotel wardrobe

…. and the sink, which is immediately on the left:

The Westminster London hotel bathroom

The lack of hand towel rails is a small pet peeve of mine, and unfortunately The Westminster falls into this trap, although the toilet door handle can act as a rail.

Toilet and shower are then in separate cubicles, with twin rainfall and normal shower head:

The Westminster London hotel toilet

and

The Westminster London hotel shower

Note that this is not real marble, although the effect is pretty convincing. It lends the room a more premium feel although, with just one down-light, both can feel quite dark.

Whilst The Westminster London is currently making its way through its stock of Crabtree & Evelyn DoubleTree toiletries it will soon be introducing its own brand of shower gel, shampoo and conditioner:

The Westminster London Curio Collection by Hilton - toiletries

From the bathroom/dressing area you then enter the bedroom proper:

The Westminster London hotel bedroom

This is a corner room so you get the corner bench by the window. Beyond that, I believe the room is fairly similar to any other room. Clever use of space gets you a proper desk, which I spent most of the afternoon working at:

The Westminster London hotel desk

…. as well as a sideboard with tea and coffee facilities and an empty mini fridge. There is a Nespresso machine with capsules:

The Westminster London hotel coffee machine

Plus a rather entertaining sign in English and Chinese warning guests not to cook noodles in the kettle:

The Westminster London hotel kettle

At the end of your bed you get a 50″ TV, and of course there are plenty of plug and USB sockets around for all your connectivity needs.

The Westminster London hotel tv

Finally, here is the view on a dreary July day:

The Westminster London hotel view

All in all it is very well done, and the innovative room layout means they have managed to fit a lot of parts into a smaller room. I particularly liked the corner desk which is spacious enough to work at but is tucked away into the corner.

Dinner at STK

The main restaurant in the hotel has been taken over by STK, a trendy pre-party Friday night steakhouse. This is the second STK to open in London, after the one in the ME London hotel on the Strand.

If you don’t know it, STK is a popular destination restaurant with an influency-Essex crowd. Rob told me a harrowing story about what he found when he accidentally walked into the very full-on experience that is ME London’s STK Sunday lunch recently ….

They often have a DJ booth (unoccupied on my Tuesday night) and Instagrammable features such as this sign:

The Westminster London hotel restaurant

Things were very quiet the night I was there and there were only a few other groups of people in the restaurant.

The Westminster London hotel stk restaurant

and

The Westminster London hotel bar

STK bring you their signature bread roll and dip when you are seated:

The Westminster London hotel restaurant

I went for the ceviche starter, which is good. I’m always a big fan of ceviche:

The Westminster London hotel ceviche

The STK menu lets you pick and mix your steak, topping and sauce depending on what you like. I went for the smallest steak, a 200g fillet steak, topped with lobster tail and bearnaise sauce:

The Westminster London hotel

The steak was cooked to my preference although it could have been served hotter – the plate was a little on the cooler side, so I’m not sure if it had been warmed or not. Note that you also have to order sides separately – as you can see above I went for a range of vegetables.

When it comes to dessert there are only three options on the menu: a cheesecake, warm cookie or chocolate cake.

The Westminster London hotel stk

We opted to share the cookie which was pretty disappointing and not to the same standard as the rest of the meal. To be honest, you’d be better off buying a bag of utterly addictive triple-choc-chip cookies from Sainsbury’s ….

There is also another, more casual, restaurant called Bao Yum:

The Westminster London Bao Yum hotel restaurant

Breakfast at The Westminster London

On the other side of STK is further seating which is used during the breakfast service:

The Westminster London breakfast hotel

A side-room is opened up and this is where you’ll find the current breakfast offering. This included a full hot breakfast buffet, which is served by a member of staff who was very eager to fill up my plate to the max!

The Westminster London hot breakfast hotel

and

The Westminster London hotel breakfast

Beyond the cooked options the offering is a little meagre:

The Westminster London hotel breakfast

There are brown bags with mini croissants/pain au chocolat, pots of yoghurt, fruit and mini cereal boxes. The breakfast feels a little lacklustre given the ‘Curio Collection’ branding, and I’ve also been to DoubleTrees with more substantial breakfast offerings. It may be that it improves now that lockdown restrictions have been fully lifted.

Gym

Whilst the finishing touches are being made on the upper floors the gym has relocated to the very top:

The Westminster London hotel gym

This has great views across London and features a mezzanine floor. The gym will stay here permanently.

Conclusion

The team behind The Westminster London have pulled off an effective rebrand and refurbishment of this large hotel. Bar the soon to be replaced toiletries you’d never know the hotel was previously a DoubleTree.

The rooms are particularly impressive, with an excellent use of space that helps to open up an otherwise fairly small footprint.

Staff were extremely attentive at every point – at reception, at dinner and at breakfast.

There is room to improve the breakfast offering and tweak some items on the STK menu but otherwise The Westminster London has opened hiccough-free and offers a great base for exploring London.

Lead-in prices start from £165 per night. The Hilton Honors cap for this hotel is 60,000 points (you can check caps here) so – given our 0.33p target valuation of a Hilton point – you would be getting outsize value from a redemption whenever room rates were above £200.

You can see more, and book, on the hotel website here.


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Comments (69)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Andrew says:

    Great review!

    “When it comes to dessert there are only free options on the menu” – sounds like my sort of place!

  • Doc says:

    Free desserts – yum. 😂

  • ChrisW says:

    Okay we need to know the story about Rob at STK now…

  • Barnaby100 says:

    It didn’t open as a Mint it was the a City Inn and their headquarters were there so the owner was often about. They much later rebranded to Mint before being sold. I used to ‘live’ in this hotel and what Hilton did when they took it over was a travesty. It become run down. The vibrant bar which had been full of civil servants and MPs died overnight. The restaurant where you previously saw the Archbishop have And locals dropping in for breakfast became a buffet in surroundings that didn’t accommodate that.

    Hopefully this is a new lease of life for a very old friend.

    • Andrew says:

      MPs died there there overnight?!

      • Barnaby100 says:

        Sadly just the bar died overnight. Although the 2010 elections did reduce the crowd a bit

        • AG says:

          The government exiting the contracts for Abel House and Cleland House (both opposite) will also have contributed to the lack / absence of government staff. I think those offices went residential but could be wrong?

          I recognised it as City Inn but was confused by the Mint comment – thanks for the clarifications (and the memories!)

    • BJ says:

      Sounds similar to the story of the City Inn in Glasgow which was cool on opening with a good restaurant that became a popular haunt. It has since evolved to be a very poor HGI. Your description of Westminster does not match my experience though, rooms I had were always in good shape and very clean. They were simple but as I mentioned this was one of the attractions to me. The lounge was a rather dire space but a sociable crown and sufficient drink made that fade into the background.

      • Barnaby100 says:

        Mice. They had a mouse problem at 1 point and I stopped going there. Stay at bankside now and walk across to Westminster

  • BJ says:

    Who is ‘we’ Rhys? 🙂

    Thanks for review, this was my favourite Hilton hotel in London until they scrapped the lounge. Seems it has not returned based on your review which is disappointing. Comments about shower and toilet being dark are also a bit disappointing as one of the main attractions to me of this hotel was that it felt bright, simple and functional. However, what made the hotel for me in the past were the service, housekeeping and status recognition. All were excellent and I hope nothing has changed in this respect. When the hotel was around 45k in normal times it offered better value than the Conrad or Trafalgar at typically 70k+. As we hopefully return to normal times it probably will still do so if redemption rates remain simular. However, were the rates to hover close to the cap then I would opt for the Conrad where you can take the extra points required from the lounge alone. In these times it seems to me that Bankside offers the best overall redemption opportunity of central Hilton hotels. Probably one point worth mentioning is that you can easily walk to Westminster hotel from three tube stations, the closest being Pimlico but Victoria and Westminster also an option.

    • Rhys says:

      Just me and Lois (who you may remember from dinner at the terrace of the JW Grosvenor House) who stayed for dinner!

    • Craig says:

      Good article and review Rhys, thanks.

      @BJ I would also concur with your comments, as a “Midlander”, either of Hilton Bankside or Conrad are my only go-to’s in London in terms of Hiltons. Have a Saturday night at the latter for £160ish in August which I feel is great value for a hotel of such quality.

  • Barnaby100 says:

    Have to say that breakfast look awful. Premier Inn eat all you can. Is the brown thing bacon?

    They used to have salmon eggs benedict.

  • Muhammad Abdullah says:

    “The lack of hand towel rails is a small pet peeve of mine, and unfortunately The Westminster falls into this trap, although the toilet door handle can act as a rail”

    Toilet door handle as a towel rail? How premium!

    Apart from DT Tower of London, was there another Mint?

    • David says:

      Hilton London Tower Bridge IIRC.
      Out of London, DT Leeds, DT Manchster Piccadilly, HGI Bristol where all City Inn then Mint.

  • John Caribbean says:

    I was there the other week. It was about £80 for the night. No acknowledgment of status, no water in room (covid?). Breakfast was just ok, but the breakfast staff were fantastic.
    Toilet and shower are bizarrely dark.
    Happy for the price obviously but I’d not rush back

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