I had never stayed at the ‘All Suites’ IHG brand ‘Staybridge Suites’ before and I was keen to try it. In search of a 4th brand for my IHG Big Win I selected this property as I needed an early start nearby.

The property is located at the Stratford International end of the huge Westfield Shopping Centre at Stratford, home of the Olympic Park. There is no direct road access to the hotel but the closest road is about a 5 minute walk from the hotel.

The building which houses the hotel also houses another IHG brand – a Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inn occupies the lower floors and the Staybridge Suites, the upper floors. The Reception for the HI is on the ground floor and the Staybridge is on the upper floor. There are separate lifts.

I tried to check-in at 2pm, but there were no rooms available. This was odd as I had checked on the web site and they were not sold out that night. So I went away and came back an hour later when the room was ready. The Agent noted that I was Priority Club Platinum, but no upgrade was offered. The property does not participate in the IHG Welcome programme, so in fact nothing was achieved by being Platinum.

The agent did give me a code for the WiFi which gave me the Premium Internet for free. Standard Internet is a perk of Platinum, but with previous experiences it was welcomed that this was offered. In fact this turned out to be the only benefit of Platinum status the entire stay.

The room was a few floors down towards the end of the corridor. The property it seems, has only a small number of basic rooms and these seemed to all be at the end of the corridors.

Opening the door I was greeted by the kitchen area:

There was microwave, fridge, hob, and dishwasher. A nice idea if you were here for a long stay. There are plenty of places to buy food to cook in the adjacent shopping centre so you could avoid room service. Room service is provided by the adjacent Holiday Inn as the Staybridge has no restaurant. There were plates, cups, cutlery and pans in the room.

The room was light and bright with a big window affording views of the Olympic swimming centre and the Orbit.

The bed was comfortable and I slept well. The window does open but there is a lot of outside noise.

The bathroom was small with only a shower:

I slept well but had to leave before breakfast.

When I raised the lack of upgrades or points for Platinums, the hotel manager told me that the hotel was full the night I stayed and that they did not do the welcome points, nor were they required to. In an exchange of emails he finally offered that perhaps their hotel was simply not for me. I tend to agree.

If I was looking for somewhere to stay for a week this could be on the list. The kitchen is nice, but the rooms are small. The comfy chair had to be moved in order to watch the TV. There were not a large number of TV channels available, but there were some non-UK channels so foreign language speakers would ok. My taxi had the most terrible trouble finding the hotel for, as I mentioned, there is no direct road access. In the end I gave them the address of the pub on the corner and they found me that way.