Made in Essex
In Britain we somewhat unfairly use the name of the beautiful, in parts anyway, county of Essex in a derogatory way. Very Essex tends to mean: tacky, brash, imperfect, too much 'bling', rather crude and cheap. Sadly, our recent stay at the Essex house showed us that it justified its name, with the exception of cheap.
The location of the Essex House is superb. The views across Central Park from the upper floors are outstanding. However, there it stops. We have stayed there a number of times in recent years and the quality of the experience has got steadily worse and despite the views we will not return.
Two years ago we lspent about a week there. The room was not ready when we arrived considerably after normal check in time. They suggested that we have some afternoon tea but then charged us for it. Then they forgot to tell us that room was ready after we hade waited 90 minutes. Many features of the room were wrong or simply did not work. The telephone instruction book was for a model of the phone that been removed some years before so it was hard to make contact to have the faults rectified. We had some helpful discussions with one of the younger managers who did try to solve the problems but without total success. In general service training was poor and staff were not fully clear about their duties. The food was less than perfect and the only good thing was the bar.
Loving the location we booked in again in August this year. Very few of the issues that we had discussed with management on the previous visit had been addressed including, to my amazement, the telephone instructions in the room which were still wrong. Service has, if anything, got worse and to our dismay the bar staff were not the same and lacked the social skills, experience and knowledge of a first class 'mixologist'.
The whole place is very bling and the presentation is of a first class hotel which the rates charged would demand. However, the quality is a thin veneer over a simple base. It is so terribly Essex.