Small rooms and as most say paper thin walls and floors. Staff OK but this is just about a 3 star property at best, also the cleaner arrived at 3pm just as we arrived home from being out so the room went unlceaned for the day.

Will not be returning and people should be aware, struggled to find room pictures after booking as a secret 4 star hotel. The secret is it is not four star!

Having stayed earlier this year with my style-hungry niece and hugely enjoyed the chic bijou comfort of this boutique hotel in bohemian LDN.I'm returning next year with my world -wearied partner who I know will LOVE this place as much as I did.Just a short walk from the off-beat shopping haven of the Portobello Rd;a middling walk to Hyde Park and a jump to multi-layered Ladbroke Grove -the area deserves more than a perfunctory stroll through on the way to the Tube.In fact the buses are closer and give a better feel for the neighbourhood if you HAVE to t visit the typical tourist haunts.Ignore the haters-they have very unrealistic expectations.And by the way;this place does a really tasty buffet cooked English breakfast-which most establishments of a similar size DON'T even offer. AND their website offers some great value deals.Our room even had a mini kitchenette so money can be saved on eating out by room picknicking.

Staff are welcoming and the hotel is clean but oh my word the double deluxe that I booked was compact in the extreme with just one window giving minimum natural daylight that looked out to nothing just a square metre of space surrounded by other walls. The bathroom was one step from the side of the bed and was very small. You could hear conversations from adjoining rooms, all in all not a good experience.

Despite having made a reservation a month advance, and despite having ALREADY PAID for the room, we arrived at the Shaftesbury Premier Notting Hill to find that our room was not available. They claimed an unspecified "maintenance issue" and offered to taxi us a half-hour out to the boondocks to one of their sister hotels in Osterly or something like that. We specifically wanted to stay in this area and were to be in London for less than 24 hours. Obviously, our time was precious and their alternative was not at all acceptable.

The front desk staff did NOT offer to find us equivalent nearby accommodations--we were basically given a refund and that was that. We wound up traipsing around the area, on foot, with luggage in tow, checking the other hotels in the neighborhood one by one. (A very helpful lady at the sold-out Phoenix Hotel came to our rescue and not only found us a room at a competitor nearby, but then called the hotel herself, negotiated a low rate on our behalf, then gave us a map upon which she drew exactly how to get there. In other words, we got better service from a hotel we hadn't even booked a room with!)

This seems to be a pattern with Shaftesbury. Do yourself a favor and check out the reviews below from Semi_Circle (11/5/12), Haylea S (10/14/12), D_Kernoghan (6/29/12), JMH1953 (2/20/12), ElenaCL (1/25/12), matthew g (1/11/12), and Richroom101 (1/3/12), who all wound up getting the "Shaftesbury shaft" like we did.

Do you really want to gamble with your room while on a trip? I sure don't, and I will never make the mistake of attempting to stay at any Shaftesbury property ever again.