Hotel Review: Hilton London Docklands Riverside
A few weeks ago I stayed at the Hilton Docklands Riverside in London, UK. It is a typical Hilton in London. Nothing great to report, except its location and ferry access from the river. It is a far cry from the luxurious Hilton at Heathrow airport, terminal 4, which I reviewed earlier. 
Location
The Hilton Docklands Riverside is conveniently located across the Thames river from Canary Wharf, a business downtown area with many companies, office complexes and restaurants. This is a pretty well connected part of London. The Jubilee line comes to Canary Wharf and on the Docklands side, there is the Canada Water train station, which has both Underground and Overground lines serving it.
Ferry
The coolest part of the Hilton is the ferry to Canary Wharf. The ferry is free for hotel guests and runs every 10 minutes almost all day. It is a short ferry ride and it is beautiful, especially at night with the lights on the Canary Wharf side (pictured). My meetings were in the Canary Wharf area and I had dinner there. So, I ended up taking the ferry multiple times. It gave an excellent view of the area and some cool high speed catamaran boats on the river.
Rooms
The rooms in the hotel were unfortunately rather small. Although that is not atypical in London City (or most of Europe, for that matter). What was more disconcerting to me were the corridors. They were narrow and wound their way in a zig zag manner thru the rooms. There was not a single straight corridor anywhere. While I did not feel unsafe at anytime, it was kind of disorienting when one had to take a turn every few yards.
The lobby was spacious. There were two restaurants attached to the lobby. One was a Costa Coffee and a full service restaurant. I had breakfast in the restaurant. It was included in my room rate. There was a good English breakfast buffet – scrambled and boiled eggs, baked beans, ham, cereals, breads and (delicious) jams.
Rating: I would give it a 3.5 out of 5. Will stay there again for the location, if I have business again in Canary Wharf. Ferry ride counted for the additional .5.
I had a bad stay there. Even if I’m a Gold HHonors member, they didn’t give me any upgrade. There is no availability they said but when I checked, I saw plenty of availability online.
Breakfast was good. Especially the view.
I’ve stayed at Hilton Canary Wharf and it was much better.
I had a weeklong stay there a few years back on a very low rate (about a quarter of the going rate) and they gave me a huge room as a Gold during peak summer time. I must agree though that the Hilton Canary Wharf is a far superior property in all aspects except for value, customer service, room quality, and location.
Stayed here during the Olympics in 2012.
Breakfast was great, but our room didn’t have AC. I know this is common in the UK, but was surprised that a Hilton didn’t have AC. We were sweltering without it in August.
Was Diamond at the time, and no upgrade [citing the high occupancy during the Olympics of course].
Was disappointed there was no executive lounge.
The farryboat ride to Canary Warf was fun.
I have to check out the Hilton Canary Wharf on my next stay there. It was way to high priced to justify staying there, compared to Hilton Docklands, when I booked