"I am writing this from the COMO Suite after the first of what is supposed to be a five-night stay. Less than 24 hours into our stay, COMO Halkin has already delivered one of the most poorly managed luxury hotel experiences I have encountered.
The fundamental problem is simple: nobody appears to know what anyone else is doing. Every interaction requires another phone call, another explanation, another correction.
Before booking, we contacted the hotel because COMO Halkin is not part of the American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts programme. We normally book through Amex Centurion and wanted to confirm whether we would receive the same suite inclusions. The hotel assured us it made no difference because they were not an Amex partner, so we booked through Centurion.
Upon arrival, we were immediately told the opposite, that our booking included neither breakfast nor any suite privileges because we had not booked directly.
Amex confirmed within minutes that breakfast was in fact included. Reception promised to investigate and call us back. They never did. Only after I called again and asked to speak with the manager was the mistake finally acknowledged.
That pattern repeated itself throughout the afternoon.
Our suite was missing bottled water, coffee and tea despite the staff member showing us to the room explaining that they were complimentary. Reception then incorrectly told us these items were not normally provided, before later admitting they simply had not been replenished.
When the tea eventually arrived, there was no kettle. After another call to reception, the duty manager rather dismissively informed us that kettles are only supplied upon request. He then volunteered that he had only been working at the hotel for two weeks, as though that somehow explained the situation. It doesn’t. Guests paying premium rates for the most expensive suite in the hotel should never be expected to lower their expectations because the hotel has failed to train its staff. That is a management problem, not a guest problem.
The problems did not stop there.
The bedroom telephone has been faulty since our arrival. It can make calls but cannot receive them. Calls only ring on the telephone in the living room. We reported this repeatedly to multiple members of staff yesterday afternoon. It was still not fixed by the evening. Instead, someone left a handwritten note on my bed asking me to call reception, only for reception to have absolutely no idea what the issue was, forcing me to explain the entire situation all over again.
The Wi-Fi in the bedroom is equally poor. The signal is so weak that it struggles to support a basic phone call, something that should be inconceivable in a flagship suite charging luxury hotel rates.
Finally, and perhaps most concerning—we were served tea with a spoon that had clearly not been washed properly. It still bore visible residue and staining from a previous guest (photo attached). This is not a minor oversight. It is a basic hygiene failure and completely unacceptable for any hotel, let alone one positioning itself as a luxury property.
Luxury hotels are built on execution. Guests should not have to verify basic booking benefits, chase missing amenities, diagnose faulty telephones, request equipment needed to use standard room facilities, struggle with unusable Wi-Fi, or question whether cutlery has even been cleaned.
Any one of these incidents could have been forgiven. Together, they point to something far more worrying: a hotel that is poorly coordinated, poorly managed and operating well below the standards associated with the COMO name.
This review is being written less than 24 hours into our stay. I sincerely hope the remaining four nights prove me wrong. Thus far, however, COMO Halkin has demonstrated that attention to detail, which is the defining characteristic of true luxury, is simply absent."
