The Langley – Upcoming stay, poor pre-arrival experience

[Kowalski]

Hi all, I’ve stayed at The Langley several times in the past but not for over 2 years. I have a 3 night cash booking this weekend and had been waiting for a pre-arrival email to arrange some restaurant reservations, book some spa treatments and a few other bits to make the stay special. Turns out they don’t send a pre-arrival email, not to me at least!

So I reached out to the hotel via the Marriott app using the chat function. It seems to take them hours to respond to messages, I’ve been waiting 3 hours so far today for a response about booking the restaurant. I managed to reach the spa via email and was very disappointed to find out the spa is fully booked on the Saturday, and only had 1 slot remaining on Sunday. Hoping we’ll be able to book the restaurant at a convenient time, although I’m becoming minded to cancel the booking (which is costing over £2k) and book somewhere else last min, with better service. I’m not getting a good vibe at all!

Has anyone out there had any recent experiences at The Langley? Perhaps on arrival everything will be wonderful.

[ns]

We stayed at the Langley last month and were incredibly underwhelmed. We found the service at the restaurant particularly lacking and actively asked for the automatic service charge added to the bill each time we dined to be removed from our total bill at the end of our stay. The front of house staff were seemingly pleasant until we mentioned the issues we had – they were then completely uninterested. The beauty of the grounds and the staff at the spa were the only redeeming features. We won’t visit again.

[Kowalski]

ns wrote:

We stayed at the Langley last month and were incredibly underwhelmed. We found the service at the restaurant particularly lacking and actively asked for the automatic service charge added to the bill each time we dined to be removed from our total bill at the end of our stay. The front of house staff were seemingly pleasant until we mentioned the issues we had – they were then completely uninterested. The beauty of the grounds and the staff at the spa were the only redeeming features. We won’t visit again.

Thanks for the reply. I’m becoming more tempted to cancel by the minute. Still no response to my email or on that chat about the restaurant.

Any suggestions on somewhere else fairly close to London that we can get to (or get near to) by train for this weekend? Looking for somewhere with beautiful large grounds like The Langley to get away from it all. Flying into London City tomorrow lunch time.

[Rob]

Hilton Syon Park can be done by train.

Fairmont Windsor Park is presumably a short taxi ride from the nearest station.

[Kowalski]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Hilton Syon Park can be done by train.

Fairmont Windsor Park is presumably a short taxi ride from the nearest station.

Thanks, will check these out!

[jj]

Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I would have expected a hotel to be able to accommodate guests in the restaurant at minimal notice. Decent places hold a few tables back for guests.

[JDB]

The Langley is Marriott attempting to play English country house hotels of which they have almost no experience so it’s not appropriately staffed. If it weren’t for Marriott Bonvoy collectors/redeemers, the place would be deserted based on price/quality.

Personally, I wouldn’t have waited for any ‘welcome’ email to book anything I wanted during my stay and I think the hotel is just rude to say there is just one slot in two days that you, as a hotel guest, can have while they let members in. The guest should be able to choose rather than be bullied into an inconvenient time slot. Restaurant bookings probably a bit easier as many will wisely eat out.

[meta]

@jj Absolutely. Never had to make an advance reservation for a hotel restaurant at any hotel outside UK. Hence why I am not doing any ‘luxury’ stays in the UK anymore. I stayed at The Langley and it wasn’t that great apart from the room. Hilton Syon Park wasn’t much better and the restaurant staff there were some of the rudest ever.

Spa is a different thing, I would be more proactive and reach out at least two weeks in advance, but even if you forget the hotel should be able to accommodate by outsourcing if needed. It’s not like you’re requesting a slot on the day.

[Kowalski]

jj wrote:

Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I would have expected a hotel to be able to accommodate guests in the restaurant at minimal notice. Decent places hold a few tables back for guests.

I’ve experienced this a few times and had to have room service.

[Kowalski]

I’ve cancelled the reservation now. Waited 5 hours for a response via the chat service on the app. Wanted to plan some other little bits with the hotel to make the stay special, but seems very difficult to get any responses from them on anything. Was looking for a blissfully relaxing stay in a luxury hotel, when paying £2000+ just for the accommodation I don’t expect to be stressing out the day before arrival with the hotel ignoring me. Bill would have been well over £3k with meals, drinks and spa treatment. Maybe I’m becoming overly fussy, but for that kind of money I expect top notch service.

[TGLoyalty]

Problem with emails is they don’t always arrive.

Not being funny but why not just phone if you’re after something or ask them to phone you?

The chat function is good but I’ve never used it for reservations / bookings.

[Peter K]

It’s not that close to London but I’ll bang the drum about The Grove at Narberth. The service was impeccable. They held back places in the restaurants for staying guests, anything you asked was not too much trouble for them if they could accommodate you. Lovely grounds. No spa sadly, but just a wonderful place to stay.

[Grant]

Whilst it was only a short overnight stay at BA’s expense, I found every member of staff I interacted with at Fairmont Windsor Park to be excellent, couldn’t fault them. Rooms are very good and if you’re dropping those sort of sums for a weekend, I’m sure you’d have a very nice stay.

Short hop in an Uber from Egham station.

My only caution would be that it is very ‘new money’, so if those types and that style isn’t your thing then perhaps give it a swerve.

[Kowalski]

TGLoyalty wrote:

Problem with emails is they don’t always arrive.

Not being funny but why not just phone if you’re after something or ask them to phone you?

The chat function is good but I’ve never used it for reservations / bookings.

The biggest issue for us in the end was that rather than both being able to have a spa treatment on Saturday and Sunday, only 1 of us was going to be able to have a treatment over the 2 days. I was having to do all the leg work and kept having to chase the hotel to try and get anything sorted, just left a bad vibe about the place and I realised we ran the risk of being annoyed all weekend rather than relaxed and enjoying ourselves.

[Kowalski]

Peter K wrote:

It’s not that close to London but I’ll bang the drum about The Grove at Narberth. The service was impeccable. They held back places in the restaurants for staying guests, anything you asked was not too much trouble for them if they could accommodate you. Lovely grounds. No spa sadly, but just a wonderful place to stay.

It looks beautiful, but a bit too far away for this trip sadly. I’ve saved it though for the future, thanks.

[Kowalski]

Grant wrote:

Whilst it was only a short overnight stay at BA’s expense, I found every member of staff I interacted with at Fairmont Windsor Park to be excellent, couldn’t fault them. Rooms are very good and if you’re dropping those sort of sums for a weekend, I’m sure you’d have a very nice stay.

Short hop in an Uber from Egham station.

My only caution would be that it is very ‘new money’, so if those types and that style isn’t your thing then perhaps give it a swerve.

Thanks, sounds great although the ‘new money’ bit does put me off a little!

[jsto]

What about Pennyhill Park? Or the (other) Grove near Watford?! Or Stoke Park which is pretty near The Langley?

[StanTheMan]

Coworth Park or Beaverbrook ? Four Seasons Hampshire in an emergency…

[Kowalski]

Hey every, thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Some great hotels I’d never heard of it. I’ve added several to my list for future trips.

Ended up booking The Fairmont Windsor Park for 3 nights. Got a 3 for 2 deal from Emyr which meant a saving of about £800 over what The Langley was going to cost! The weekend was fantastic until Sunday evening when it all went a bit wrong, which was a real shame, because up until then it really had been excellent. Very friendly staff, beautiful grounds and surrounding area, great spa, delicious food etc. But on Sunday there was a wedding reception happening in the hotel’s hall, which happened to be directly under the room. The music was extremely loud, causing a LOT of vibration in the room. I’m shocked at just hot big a sound system they had in there. I presumed the music would finish early, but at 9:10pm it was still going strong so I called down to reception to ask what time the event and music would finish.. They said at 1am! I therefore asked to change room as normally asleep by 10:30pm, and there was no chance of sleeping in that room. Rather than being extremely apologetic I got the impression I was putting the hotel out. Thankfully they offered a move to a different room (a downgrade but I didn’t care about that). I had hoped they might simply provide the other room to sleep in and then return to the original room in the morning to shower and prepare for the day, but they said that wasn’t possible. So had to pack everything which took over half an hour, then wait over 20min for the member of staff to bring the keys for the new room, but didn’t bring a trolley, then unpack and settle into the new room. The following morning I’d hoped to get a slightly later checkout than the already agreed midday checkout (which they promised at check-in), and they tried to tell me checkout had to be no later than 11am. After explaining that 12 had already been agreed, the lady grudgingly allowed the midday checkout.

All of that left a sour taste after such a nice weekend. I’d not sure I’d return, but as I said before, everything up to that point had been fantastic. A true judge of a place is how they deal with things when things go wrong however, and they were badly lacking in that department.

[Froggee]

I would suggest sharing this with the general manager.

Not in an attempt to get compensation but because these hotels generally value reasonable feedback and your feedback sounds thoroughly reasonable to me.

They failed on two levels – the first is choosing the £££ from a big wedding booking knowing it would inconvenience other guests (they will know your room would be noisy but chose to put you in it) and the second being zero service recovery.

Any half decent general manager should be given the chance to make things better even if by only offering you a genuine apology.

[Mrs_Fussy]

Froggee wrote:

I would suggest sharing this with the general manager.

Not in an attempt to get compensation but because these hotels generally value reasonable feedback and your feedback sounds thoroughly reasonable to me.

They failed on two levels – the first is choosing the £££ from a big wedding booking knowing it would inconvenience other guests (they will know your room would be noisy but chose to put you in it) and the second being zero service recovery.

Any half decent general manager should be given the chance to make things better even if by only offering you a genuine apology.

Agree ! We know the management and would HIGHLY recommended that its shared. It is the groups Flagship property and they would genuinely appreciate feedback.

[Kowalski]

Mrs_Fussy wrote:

Froggee wrote:

I would suggest sharing this with the general manager.

Not in an attempt to get compensation but because these hotels generally value reasonable feedback and your feedback sounds thoroughly reasonable to me.

They failed on two levels – the first is choosing the £££ from a big wedding booking knowing it would inconvenience other guests (they will know your room would be noisy but chose to put you in it) and the second being zero service recovery.

Any half decent general manager should be given the chance to make things better even if by only offering you a genuine apology.

Agree ! We know the management and would HIGHLY recommended that its shared. It is the groups Flagship property and they would genuinely appreciate feedback.

Hey, seems I missed the replies on this thread! So thought I’d post an update to say I did contact the Fairmont Windsor Park with my feedback. The front of house manager replied, gave a properly apology and issued a 50% refund for the final night of the stay.

[AJA]

Thanks for reporting back. I read the original thread and also missed the subsequent replies. That sounds like a decent service recovery however I find it a shame that it wasn’t proactively offered at the time.

Also I think it is a shame that it happened to you in the first place. If sound penetrates a room like that they should definitely not be putting paying guests in the room if an event is being held in the room below. That said the obvious people to put in the room are those who are attending the wedding aa they’d likely not be in the room above until the end of the event. That assumes that any of the guests are staying overnight.