The Cumberland Hotel in London

The Cumberland homepage
It is said that £44,000 has been spent on each bedroom - which any hotelier will tell you is a lot. On the website they have spent much less judging from the result.
What are the problems with the site?

• I dont really like the design. It lacks distinction and the execution lacks exactness and a sense of detail. There are a lot of disagreeable touches such as the list of alliance partners (what is this an airline?) the little drop down menu. The content box on the right is an interesting idea but doesn't really work and the lines impose on the viewer.
• The content on the site is weak and the site gives little detail of the hotel. I almost feel like I am reading a GDS entry and not the official website.
• The online booking service, like so many is confusing and and the layout is poor as a result of using the small content box. As a sales tool it strikes me as weak.
• Wearing my SEO hat the long URLs and the redirects suggest that the pages wont rank well for search engines. The lack of content is a disadvantage. I will be interested to see how the XML source works in Google.

Inside Page from Cumberland Hotel