The catch at Shangri-La The Shard, London

All 202 rooms are glazed floor to ceiling, but the glass is not all pointed at London. The hotel's own room pages are precise about it: the Superior Shard Room, 30 to 48 square metres, is described as facing south towards Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and the Premier Shard Room, 40 to 58 square metres, offers mostly southerly views. The river and the City side begin with the Deluxe City View Room, which the hotel says looks north and east at the landmarks without naming them, and continue up through Premier City View, northerly, to the Iconic City View Room, a corner set with 180 degrees of glass.

So the picture that sold you the hotel is a paid step up, and the entry rate buys a very high room over south London: a long view, a carpet of lights after dark, and not the one on the brochure. This page does not price the step, so compare the two categories for your dates before you book.

The Shard's glass panels overhang the floor plates, and at the corners they meet at right angles. When the building opened in May 2014 the trade press reported that, with the lights on at night, those protruding panels worked like mirrors and guests in some rooms could glimpse the room next door. The hotel's general manager at the time accepted the point, said it was a consequence of a building made largely of glass, and answered with blinds for guest privacy. The mechanism has not changed because the building has not, and the rooms most exposed to it are the corner ones, which is the category we recommend.

Every room page lists bedside controls for a sun-shielding panel and black-out curtains, so the tools exist. What you lose by using them is the thing you paid for, which is the whole trade in one sentence.

The Infinity Sky Pool on level 52 is the highest hotel pool in Western Europe, and it is small. Published first-hand accounts put it at ten metres, behind glass, with a booked slot of an hour. The hotel's own wellness page gives the rules: adults from six in the morning to six in the evening, children only from nine to eleven and three to five, and a time slot that must be reserved, either when you book the room or on arrival. The Sky Sauna beside it keeps the same hours. Guests report that slots go early and that the six o'clock close cuts the day short, which is the recurring gripe in recent reviews.

There is no spa floor. ELEMIS facials, massages and nail treatments are listed in private treatment rooms, and the hotel's own facilities list files them as in-room spa services. The Technogym gym is the one thing on level 52 that never shuts.

GŎNG, the bar beside the pool, is the other reason people book, and it runs on bar rules rather than hotel ones. Its own site says reservations are highly recommended to guarantee access, that tables are allocated for an hour and a half, and that a window seat cannot be guaranteed. Nobody under 18 is admitted after eight in the evening, the dress code is smart and elegant, and the hours are three in the afternoon to half past eleven from Monday to Wednesday, midday to one in the morning Thursday to Saturday and midday to half past eleven on Sunday. Guests report a per-head minimum spend at the tables, which the bar does not publish on its own pages.

None of that is unreasonable for the highest hotel bar in Western Europe. It just means the drink you pictured taking at the glass on a whim is a booking, a queue at the ground-floor screen and a ninety-minute window.

The hotel has no ground floor of its own. You come in at a small door on St Thomas Street, put your bags through a security check that first-hand accounts describe as quick and friendly, and take one express lift to the level 35 sky lobby, which TĪNG shares. Guests report that the queues people complain about as lifts are really queues at the screen downstairs and at the desk upstairs at check-out. The hotel's own facilities list offers express check-in and check-out, which tells you it knows.

A car makes it worse. The address is inside the Congestion Charge zone, 18 pounds a day paid in advance or on the day and 21 if you pay late, applied from seven in the morning to six in the evening on weekdays and from midday at weekends. The hotel lists parking facilities as paid and publishes no rate. Guests also report deposit holds on cards that are slow to clear after departure.