Hotel Review: Heathrow Sheraton

So, once again I'm falling behind with my hotel reviews.

This is one of two Sheratons for Heathrow; not to be confused with the Skyline Hotel. Perhaps the Skyline is nicer.

To be fair, the hotel isn't wretched, but compared with what other hotels near Heathrow manage - like the Marriott, for example - it falls disappointingly short. The rooms are clean, the bed good. It's the communal areas where things fall down.

There's one kitchen servicing three eating areas, all of which abut each other; each have slightly different menus and there seems a genuine reluctance to allow people to sit in the bar and order from the "cafe" menu, for example. To be honest, nobody would want to sit in the bar anyway - it's dark and noisy and uncomfortable.

You wouldn't really want to sit in the cafe area, either - it calls itself a cafe, but it's just chairs in the recepetion area. It's like sitting in an airport check-in queue, in fact, but since the only other option was the laughably poor and overpriced restaurant proper, that's where we wound up.

I tried to order the only vegetarian dish on the menu; the woman glumly told me I couldn't have it. "We don't do that here. I don't know why it's on the menu."

I see. To be fair, she did tell me there was a different vegetarian pasta available, which I had, and was edible, but the appearance of a non-existent item on the menus, that nobody had even bothered to cross out with a Sharpie, sums up the general feeling of this place: nobody does anything more than they have to. There's no attention to detail; there's no sense of care or pride. That Sheraton allow this to carry on under one of their luxury brands - and charges a luxury price for it - is a blot on their record, I'm afraid.