Hotels
Where to stay in London, including the day-use rooms and the discreet options most hotel guides will not discuss. Prices and booking rules taken from each property’s own published information.
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Where to stay in London is the page to read first, because here the neighbourhood decides more than the hotel does. It sets out which districts suit which kind of trip, and what each one costs you in travel time at the other end of the day.
After that: the best hotels for the rooms themselves, the five star list for the top end, and day use hotels for the rooms let by the afternoon rather than the night, which is a real and badly documented corner of the market.
Check-in times, luggage storage and early arrival policies vary far more between hotels than the star ratings suggest, so they are quoted from the hotel rather than summarised.
Five Star Hotels in London: What It Actually Means
Three rating systems, and they disagree. The nineteen London hotels that hold a Forbes Five-Star, the famous names that do not, and why the small ones win.
Discreet Hotels in London: What Privacy Actually Buys
What makes a hotel genuinely discreet, which London areas deliver it, and how to book for privacy without making yourself the most memorable guest there.
Day Use Hotels in London: Rooms by the Hour, Legitimately
Book a London hotel room for the afternoon at 40 to 75% below the overnight rate. How day use works, where to book it, and when it is the right answer.
London’s New Luxury Hotels Are Beating the Institutions Charging the Same
London's grand institutions, the billion-pound new arrivals, and how to pick between them. Plus the weekend rate arbitrage that saves a fortune in the City.
By area
1 neighbourhoodThe neighbourhood guides that cover this, with the number of venues each one checks. Every address, price and opening time in them was taken from the venue's own published information.
Elsewhere in the guide
Questions we get asked
Which London hotels hold a Forbes Five Star rating?
Nineteen across the city. Three of them are on Knightsbridge itself, the Bvlgari, the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park and The Egerton House, with The Berkeley a short walk away at Wilton Place. No other postcode in London comes close to that concentration.
Is a five star rating the same as five stars on a booking site?
No, and the gap is the most misleading thing in London hospitality. A booking site star is self declared or crowd sourced. A Forbes rating is an anonymous inspection against a published standard, which is why a small townhouse hotel can rate above names you would assume outrank it.
Can you use a luxury London hotel without staying there?
Yes, and it is the cheapest way to see the inside of one. The bars and lounges of the five star hotels serve the public, take walk ins, and nobody will ask whether you have a room. Afternoon tea does the same thing at a fixed price.