I haven’t ever stayed at the (ex-Crowne Plaza) Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment but the reviews look… interesting.
Reports are that it ‘still feels like a Crowne Plaza’ with very small rooms. There’s no club lounge. Guests report being refused upgrades even when better rooms sit empty. And the owner!
Instructs restaurant staff not to allow free refills of coffee at breakfast
Uses the lobby bar as an office for hours at a time
I suspect that this owner is perhaps really a family member rather than the patriarch of the family which owns the hotel. Ownership of the property rests in Cannon Corporate UK Ltd which is in turn apparently controlled by Mudhar Ghassan Shawkat an ex-Iraqi politician shown to have moved money out of Iraq while the U.S. was pouring money in.
The Paradise Papers showed that law firm Appleby wasn’t even willing to escrow $140 million for Shawkat and his son, though they later set up a trust and affiliated companies in the British Virgin Islands for them, while flagging an offshore charitable company they were asked to set up as a receptacle for “funds coming out of Iraq” that had no other benefit “other than lack of accountability.” They continued to provide legal services to Shawkat, however, because they were aware only of “accusations of favoritism in the award of government contracts.”
There are some properties, like the Ritz-Carlton torture hotel, where I wouldn’t be comfortable staying. The cheapness of a Hyatt Regency refusing coffee refills notwithstanding, is it weird that the background of this property owner likely puts the Albert Embankment property into the category of hotels I want to avoid?
by Gary Leff
