The 'cheapest hotel in London', Stelios's easyHotel opened earlier this week in Kensington, so we thought we'd wait a couple of days to see what the press made of it all.
The first thing to note is that the hotel was fully booked on it's first day of business... although not all the customers had a smooth experience.
In an excellent article in The Times Alan Hamilton reports that:
Pius and Peter Fan, brothers from Melbourne, Australia, were the first guests to check in yesterday... Their check-in was not quite as smooth as it might have been at the Connaught. They were shown to their room, only to find a television cameraman standing on the bed trying to capture the tiny dimensions with a fish-eye lens.
They were shown to another room, to discover the lights were broken. They were soon fixed and, at the price they were paying, the Fan brothers decided not to make a scene.
The hotel is situated at Lexham Gardens in Earls Court, and has 34 rooms (Stelios spent £3 million buying and converting an old bed and breakfast). As the BBC tells us "Only three of the rooms have windows and they come in three sizes - small, very small and tiny. They are 80 sq ft, 70 sq ft and 60 sq ft respectively," (always good with the facts the Beeb).
There is no bar or lounge in the hotel and the only place you're likely to bump into other people is the reception desk, which we assume will be staffed by the "one member of staff [who] will be permanently on site." So don't even think about room service.
Oh, and you get a TV, but you have to pay an extra fiver to watch it.
What you do get though is "air conditioning and en-suite bathrooms with towels,"
The Guardian meanwhile points out (in a rather Yoda-like fashion) that "Room to swing a cat, there is not".
And, before you ask, no you can't rent the rooms by the hour.
