My mother and I had the sad business of attending the funeral of my uncle who lived in a nearby nursing home, so chose this hotel as it was nearby. My entire family were born and raised in the area, and most of us have moved away, but we still know the area very well, so were surprised to find the hotel being classed as SHOREDITCH, as it is actually in Bethnal Green, near the boundary with Hackney, and very close to Cambridge Heath Railway station Which made me wonder are hotels now doing a Ryanair style description of their locations?, such as PARIS (Beauvais) or GLASGOW (Prestwick) as Shoreditch is a good mile away or so from this hotel!
Location wise, the hotel is only about 10 to 15 minutes walk from Bethnal Green tube station and only just around the corner from Cambridge Heath railway station, both are the next stop down from Liverpool street, on the central line, and national railway respectively. The is a bus stop outside the hotel, served by several bus routes.
My main gripe was, none of the staff we spoke to were actually British, let alone English and were mostly eastern Europeans, and actually had trouble understanding our (local) east London accents, and we had to repeat ourselves several times in most cases. They were however, very sympathetic when hearing that we were there to attend a funeral.
We had a meal in the hotel on the first night, which was very nice, but when we asked if we could charge it to the room, the waiter very helpfully checked with the reception staff, came back and said that we could do this, but would need to register a credit card with them, and he went and told the man on reception that we were going to do this. When we got there, he did not seem to understand, did not really listen and told us to go to the bar, and pay there, the barman did not seem to understand either, and thought we wanted to set up a bar tab! In the end the rather embarrassed waiter intervened and let us pay by credit card via his PDQ machine directly. None of this was his fault, and he did the best he could to ease the embarrassment! The next evening, we ate there again and found the waiter was on hand straight away when it came to paying the bill, presenting us with the card reader, so we would not have anymore commotion like we had the previous night!
All in all, not a bad stay but there could be a few improvements, as I got the impression that I had just paid CROWNE PLAZA prices (greatly reduced thanks to ROOMEX), for just above TRAVELODGE facilities........