JW Marriott Grosvenor House London — Comparison and Analysis of London’s Five-Star Marriott Hotels, Part 1: Marriott Bonvoy Platinum, Breakfast, and an Honest “Not Recommended” Review

Hello.

I’m Dr. Baek, a dentist who dreams of becoming an implant specialist and a food connoisseur.

At the beginning of 2025, I desperately needed a refresh. I planned a trip to London and Iceland and returned safely.

Since I had already visited London twice, the themes of this trip were “traveling slowly and enjoying myself” and “a hotel vacation.”

I also decided to take on a new concept: visiting as many Marriott hotels as possible. After choosing very carefully, I stayed at a total of five Marriott hotels. Saving the most satisfying top-tier property, EDITION Reykjavik, for last, I’ll first compare and analyze four five-star hotels in London in detail.

I’ll write about them starting with the property where I personally felt the least satisfied. These are subjective impressions, so please use them only as a reference.

• JW Marriott Grosvenor House London

• The London EDITION

• The Westin London City

• London Marriott Hotel Park Lane

All of them are five-star hotels, and I stayed there using the Platinum Elite status I received through the Marriott Bonvoy The Best Shinhan Card. London is a historic city with many excellent hotels, but since my budget was limited, I focused on Marriott properties where I could receive relatively favorable benefits.

In each post, I’ll focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each hotel compared with the others.

This is my Marriott Bonvoy The Best Shinhan Card review post, which I put quite a lot of effort into writing. I’m happy that it received plenty of views. Haha. I’ll get the Classic card soon as well and organize a review of that one too~

This trip was made using a Korean Air mileage award ticket :) I also wrote a fairly detailed post about my Incheon–London First Class and Prestige Class flights.

JW Marriott Grosvenor House London

(JW Marriott Grosvenor House London)

This is the only JW Marriott hotel in London, one of the world’s three major cities.

The name is quite difficult, isn’t it? To help you remember it, Grosvenor is the surname of a British aristocratic family.

This handsome blond British gentleman is younger than I am, yet his fortune amounts to several tens of trillions of won.

This British duke inherited an enormous fortune. JW Marriott moved into the house of the Grosvenor family as a tenant, so to speak. That is how the name JW Marriott Grosvenor House London came about. Easy, right?

Looking at the rates for a Friday-to-Saturday stay exactly one month later, the cheapest room costs around 600,000 won. I booked this one as well.

Even from the photos, the hotel does not give the impression of being newly built.

Unfortunately, it rained frequently during our trip.

The London five-star hotel JW Marriott Grosvenor House London has a beautiful exterior that looks impressive both at night and during the day. Entering the hotel made me feel like an aristocrat :)

The doorman at the entrance carried our luggage and kindly opened the door for us.

Five-star hotels abroad certainly give you the strong impression that you are being treated well.

When you enter the lobby, sparkling balloons hang from the ceiling.

They make the space feel even more elaborate than it looks in the photos, which put me in a great mood. The person you see is the concierge handling check-in.

The lobby is not enormous, so it was easy to look around quickly.

Who are the people in the portraits on the left? They are the Marriotts!!! This was the first time I had seen portraits of the founder’s family displayed in a hotel. Wow… What would you have to do in a previous life to enjoy this kind of wealth?

On the right are fresh flowers placed on a table in the hotel lobby!! A table covered with such a huge floral arrangement…

It was about the same size as the one I saw at Josun Palace.

As expected from a five-star London hotel, it also offers afternoon tea.

Since it is next to Hyde Park, there are many five-star hotels nearby that serve afternoon tea. I only took a quick look at the menu.

It really is an affluent neighborhood.

One notable feature is that there are plenty of chairs where guests can sit while waiting, and the restroom is truly impressive.

According to my wife, the women’s restroom is even more impressive.

It may look ordinary in the photos, but the black-and-white design is beautifully balanced and everything is wonderfully polished.

The amenities are from Penhaligon’s, of all brands…

Along with EDITION, which uses Le Labo products, these were the amenities that left the strongest impression on me.

They do smell a little like an old man, though… haha.

Oh, right! In the photo on the right, you can see that the sink is by Villeroy & Boch.

I thought they only made dishes, but apparently they make sinks too… Even the urinal is by Villeroy & Boch. That was a little shocking!

Anyway, the lobby has a refined yet glamorous atmosphere.

Superior Room, Guest Room, 1 King Bed

I booked a room with one queen bed but was upgraded to one king bed. That was a benefit of about 50,000–100,000 won!

The room was quite large. Looking at the Marriott website, the room sizes seem to vary considerably, probably because this is an older hotel.

All of the five-star Marriott hotels I visited in London had a consistently clean feel.

The building looks as though it could be 100 years old, but apart from the somewhat low ceilings, it appears to be very well maintained.

The entrance looks quite antique…

This is the view that unfolds when you open the entrance door.

The photo on the right was taken while standing between the doors visible in the photo on the left.

The room is truly huge. I even wondered whether it really needed to be this spacious…

There is both a table and a desk, and it looks as though you could spread out another three or four suitcases on the floor.

The bed may look this way in the photo, but it is genuinely very large.

Honestly, it is big enough for four people like me to sleep on… Maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration. Haha.

The photo on the right was taken while sitting on the bed. As you can see, there is another room, right?

We spread our suitcases out there… The room was so spacious that part of it felt almost unnecessary. Still, it felt good~

This is what that room looks like inside.

There is a robe, a luggage rack, a safe, and everything else you need.

There is a bathroom to the right of the entrance, with impressive marble interiors.

Perhaps because a nearby station is Marble Arch, I noticed quite a few bathrooms with marble patterns.

There is no separate bidet.

I consider hotel amenities fairly important, but perhaps because this was a standard room, the products were not from Penhaligon’s…

Looking at the photos on the Marriott website, it seems that Penhaligon’s amenities are provided from the suite category and above.

Still, these amenities should be perfectly usable, right?

I took photos of the minibar and coffee maker even though I did not use either of them…

Interestingly, in the UK, beverages tend to be served in glass bottles. Still water is provided free of charge.

Executive Lounge — Happy Hour

The entrance to the Executive Lounge is hidden like this. Be sure to ask a staff member where it is~

There is a door with a magic mirror behind the statue, a symbol of JW Marriott. Tap your key card on the reader to the right and pull the door open to enter.

Since the lounge serves happy hour during the day, I went there soon after checking in.

The Executive Lounge is quite large. The seating area you see here may be about half of it.

There is also a large room, so larger families can enjoy the lounge together.

On the other hand, the fact that the lounge is so large gives it a very public feel, which may explain why the food can seem a little basic.

Because I had Marriott Bonvoy Platinum status, I was able to access the Executive Lounge.

Most Executive Lounges offer happy hour during the day, with simple snacks available.

Sometimes the food is substantial enough to fill you up, while at other times it feels more like simply grabbing a bite.

This lounge was the latter.

They presented the “Afternoon Delights” with a simple illustration and description.

Could this be the scone served with afternoon tea? Haha.

It was not extremely buttery, but it tasted quite good.

There was also cream and butter on the side.

There were also simple tarts and cakes.

We had rushed over right after checking in, so there was not much left.

I thought the red velvet cake was delicious.

Whenever I come to Europe, I wonder why the bakery items, including croissants, and the jams taste so good!!!

They look delicious even before you taste them.

Along with the jelly beans featured in Harry Potter, there was a generous selection of sweets, including chocolate, jellies, and candy.

What do you think? It is pretty decent, isn’t it? Haha.

You can make coffee as often as you like, and in expensive London, it is easy to enjoy plenty of drinks, including cola, as well as water. So once you have access to the Executive Lounge, your travel expenses can actually decrease quite a bit…

Since I did not have much time, I brought some desserts and scones and enjoyed them with drinks.

Personally, I thought the Afternoon Delights served during happy hour were of fairly decent quality.

Executive Lounge — Dinner

The reason to visit again in the evening is that the lounge provides simple alcoholic drinks and snacks.

I was also a little tired from traveling that day, so I came back early. As I get older, I find it pleasant to eat and drink comfortably in the Executive Lounge and go straight up to the room, rather than spending 100,000–200,000 won at a mediocre pub. Haha.

The chicken had the feel of spicy braised chicken flavored with curry. There was also Southeast Asian rice!

Those two dishes alone made for a fairly satisfying meal. For some reason, they even felt a little like Korean food. Haha.

After eating the rice and chicken, I accidentally filled myself up quite a bit………………

There was also a generous selection of cheeses and nuts, which Europeans seem to enjoy, along with simple vegetables and thin wheat pancakes for wrapping them. The vegetables were fresh and very popular!

There were also simple salads, as well as the nuts I enjoyed the most!

I did not try the simple pretzel snacks… haha.

Compared with the somewhat modest snacks, the alcoholic drinks were excellent.

There was red wine, white wine, champagne, beer, and more. Anyway, I brought back a plate like the one on the right!

Personally, I felt that the food was a little less substantial than at the other properties ^^;;;

The flavors also seemed somewhat bland overall… It was a case of there being little to eat at a much-anticipated feast.

Executive Lounge — Breakfast

Finally, breakfast! This must also have been a benefit of Marriott Bonvoy Platinum status.

I really like European bakery items, so I was looking forward to breakfast.

The basic bakery selection, including croissants, fruit pastries, and bagels, was well stocked.

Salted butter was thoughtfully provided, and there were fruits such as bananas as well.

There were several types of cereal and various toppings.

Basic fruits such as watermelon, kiwi, and pineapple were also available.

Scrambled eggs, sausages, and bacon are essential, right?

There was plenty of all three.

The cold selections included salmon, various types of ham, tomatoes, cucumbers, and more…

There were more types of yogurt than I expected.

I think I saw the yogurt in the upper right at almost every hotel~

Colorful fresh fruit juices were served chilled as well.

And this was the finished, respectable-looking breakfast!

The important thing is the taste, though…

It was delicious. It really was, but honestly, compared with the other three five-star Marriott hotels in London and EDITION Reykjavik in Iceland, the overall quality was far below theirs.

Personally, I concluded that it was at the level of breakfast at a four-star hotel, or perhaps slightly below that.

• JW Marriott Grosvenor House London

• The London EDITION

• The Westin London City

• London Marriott Hotel Park Lane

After spending a total of nine nights, I clearly experienced the strengths and weaknesses of all four hotels.

Of the hotels I introduced today, JW Marriott Grosvenor House London is one I personally would not recommend.

Its Google rating is an impressive 4.5, but please consider my opinion only as a reference. Haha.

The advantages are:

First, the rooms are spacious. The hotel looks somewhat old, but the generously sized rooms feel comfortable.

The doorman who opens the door at the entrance is friendly. Even without being asked, he checks whether you need a taxi and so on.

The disadvantages are:

The biggest disadvantage is that the food in the Executive Lounge is not very satisfying…

Even at hotels in the same city, the croissants tasted different. In my personal opinion, the croissants at JW Marriott Grosvenor House London had no character at all. The other dishes were not particularly impressive either… They felt as though they had been prepared mainly to fill out the selection.

The evening snacks to accompany drinks were especially disappointing.

There is no swimming pool. Many hotels are old and still rated five stars, but some do not have pools, more than you might expect.

The amenities are not particularly good. It is still a five-star hotel, so this was disappointing.

The hotel also feels somewhat dated. It takes a little time to walk there from Marble Arch station.

I tried to compare the five-star Marriott hotels in London where I stayed as objectively as possible.

Even though their prices were not dramatically different, this was personally the hotel that seemed to have the fewest distinctive advantages.

I’ll be back in my next post with The London EDITION~!

That was another look at the daily life of Dr. Baek, the dentist!!