London's Vertical Gateway:
Hotel Verta Essentials:
- Address: Bridges Wharf, Battersea, London SW11 3BE
- Telephone: +44 (0)207 801 3500
- Price Band: $$$ Rates are available with or without breakfast
- Facilities: Restaurant, bar, spa with thermal rooms and hydrotherapy pool, spa treatments, gym, helicopter rides, meeting and function rooms.
- Visit their website
A Room With a View:
Hotel Verta Decor:
The Bottom Line:
We didn't stay overnight at the Hotel Verta but visited in January and again in March to look around and use some of the facilities. We also attended a party in one of the function rooms in December. These comments are based on those visits.
Overall - This is a very glamorous hotel. Rooms are slick and well appointed, public areas are glossy and the river views are sensational. The price for a standard room is substantially less than visitors might expect to pay for the level of luxury but the trade-off is the out of the way location.
Location - A stretch of new, futuristic apartments line the river alongside the Verta in both directions. But step inland a block or two and you are in warehouse and workshop land, backed up by council estates. Local shops, restaurants and bars are almost nonexistant and the nearest London Underground station is Clapham Junction. The hotel, optimistically, declares the station is 10 minutes away but, of course, that depends on how fast you walk, how much you are carrying and whether you want to wheel your Louis Vuitton bags through some relatively dubious neighborhoods. If you drive, valet parking at the hotel is free for guests, otherwise plan on hefty taxi fares to take advantage of London's best shopping, theater, dining, culture and nightlife.
Settling in pains - On two of our three visits, the relatively new hotel's drains and ventilation systems let it down. Cooking smells permeated a luxury suite several floors above the restaurant kitchens and drain odors met us when we entered the luxurious wet area of the spa - though to be fair, they cleared pretty quickly. The Hotel Verta's unusual, out of the way location and relatively well-priced rooms made it a brave venture in the 2010/2011 marketplace. We're hoping the shortcomings we observed are just growing pains and look forward to visiting in the future when systems are up to speed and up to the Hotel Verta's self-declared 5-star rating.
