I’ll start with the positives. Excellent location a stones throw from Belsize Park Tube and Englands Lane shops and cafes in a quiet residential area. The place was mostly very clean and the studio room is large. The bathroom is small but the shower is excellent and the water is hot. All obvious amenities were present (apart from an old looking note stuck to dishwasher saying it wasn’t working. That didn’t matter to me but I did wonder why not get it fixed? ) Host forgot to send check in instructions but was responsive when I messaged her and kindly came over to help me when the remote wouldn’t turn on the TV and the basement window lock didn’t work. We easily resolved the TV but not the window lock. Not great for a lone female traveller in a basement in central London.
I didn’t feel comfortable or at home here. It’s an Airbnb plus listing so I was expecting more. Plus hosts sign up to a whole load of high standards and extras but this place felt tired. Basement outside area not cleaned of rubbish or swept and you are greeted on steps down by a dead plant in a pot. It’s basic and dated. Cheap old white formica table, desk and wardrobes. Hard cold stone floor. Small cold leather sofa. Loads of dusty DVD’s for the sIde of the TV ( that gives you an idea of how out of date it is!) makes it feel like a teenage boys bedroom circa 2000.
Feels in terms of quality and ambience like one of the older student rooms in halls. Very old very small TV with poor picture and sound quality. Old IKEA type metal Venetian blind with very grubby old pull cords hard to operate. I didn’t get the crisp white cotton bedding, the flowers in the room or the F & M welcome basket as in the inviting photos. These are misleading. None of these. Instead the bedding was an un ironed washed out habitat red pattern over a 4 tog paper thin synthetic old quilt ( yes in November!) on a hard mattress without topper. Towels were an array of mustard and blue patterns. Nothing blended or matched. There was a very long pile rug and a very thick woolly blanket clearly not washed between guests and neither practical nor inviting during covid.
I knew it was a basement studio with windows when I booked but I didn’t expect the view out to be completely obscured by opaque film on the windows. This room needs the light to come in and easy to operate shutters for privacy. It felt a bit like a cell. The only heating is underfloor and patchy. I was cold at night.
Air bnb Plus standard? Definitely not.