My wife and I are going to vacation in England in March, spending 3 days in London. There are hundreds of hotel options, and it’s a little overwhelming. I’m looking at staying near either the Hyde Park area, or near the British Museum.
I’m looking for 2 pieces of advice:
a) is there an ideal neighborhood/district for general tourists and
b) what is the best way to book the hotel (directly through their website, bookings.com, Travelocity, etc.)?
The area immediately around Hyde Park - Kensington, Chelsea, Mayfair - is the most expensive real estate in the UK, so hotels will be expensive. Soho is also expensive. But maybe you’re fine with a tiny room if you’re going to be out all day.
You might prefer a somewhat less expensive area a mile or two outside the immediate Hyde Park - British Museum area. Public transportation is excellent, although less good south of the river. From anywhere a miile or two W N or E of the immediate Hyde Park to British Museum area it will be very easy to hop on a tube for a couple of stops.
What’s your budget?
I find it’s always worth looking at hotels’ own websites before booking through an aggregator like Booking.com, as some groups offer preferential rates for direct bookings (as it obviously saves them paying fees to aggregators).
I tend to use Booking.com as I get points/discounts, but if you look at Trivago, they show comparison rates for a lot of the aggregators.
For location, and to save spending lots of time travelling on the Tube to get to places, look at staying Zone 1 (as indicated on Transport for London Tube maps). Avoid the City (east) – as the financial district it’s dead on weekends, and during the week all the restaurants and pubs are full of bankers.
I like the Southbank (south of the river, opposite Westminster), and Bloomsbury (British Museum)/Holborn/Clerkenwell - walkable to the action, but cheaper than the West End (Westminster/Covent Garden/Soho etc).
Personally not a fan of Hyde Park area, I find it to be all hotels and not much atmosphere or good places to eat. But it’s fine.
here’s a thread from a while back that talks about accommodation advice for London, could well be relevant.
Thanks everyone, so far - really helpful!
Awesome advice, this is exactly what I wanted to avoid. We want an area that’s somewhat walkable and interesting on its own (i.e. fun restaurants for dinner, nice cafes for morning coffee), but accessible to the city for daytime touring. We know London has great transportation, so we’re not worried about that.
Have a look at “Premier Inns” They are a mid-range group with several hotels in central London.
Before you decide, take a look at the lacalty on street map to get an idea of what there is within walking distance. Tripadvisor is also a useful resource if you disregard the over-effusive 5* and ridiculous 1* reviews.
The last place we booked was an Airbnb in Docklands. Very close to the parks and museums in Greenwich. And a fairly quick trip to Westminster via rail/underground or water taxi.
I’ll second the bit about Bloomsbury and the West End, specifically Covent Garden. They are both nice areas, and you can actually walk between them in about 20 minutes.
I start with Booking.com and then normally book directly, as many hotels may give additional discounts. Be careful about differing cancellation policies, though.
Another good reason to book directly with the hotel is that if you need to make changes to your reservation it’s generally easier if you booked directly through the hotel rather than a third party. I prefer to book flights directly through the airline’s website for the same reason (not that you asked).
I don’t know anything about London, specifically, but my general method of booking hotels is: 1) Figure out what area I want to stay in or what landmark I want to stay near. 2) Display all the hotels in that area on a map. Even Google Maps will do that, but also pretty much all the major booking sites will have a “show on map” option. 3) Find a hotel on that map that fits my budget.
We splurged once and stayed at the Corinthia, London, which is just outside of Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden. Amazing location for exploring, beautiful hotel, but pricey. I would definitely stay there again, finances willing…
For your b) question, I’d advise looking at Google Maps. It will often refer you to booking.com or similar websites, but may have options not available on the biggest hotel websites.
If you’re looking for low effort, then the neighbourhood you’re looking for is Russell Square, It’s where many package holiday providers use as their London base. It’s close to the British Museum, but I wouldn’t recommend it. My general recommendation for a mid-level London hotel is the Gloucester Road area. It’s walkable for the South Kensington museums, Knightsbridge (Harrods) if you don’t mind walking a bit further, and has good transport links via the Tube. There used to be some bargains around Victoria train station, but I don’t have personal knowledge about them, or if they’re still around. Queensway is another possibility which is adjacent to Hyde Park, but I’ve only walked by the hotels there - can’t say anything good or bad.
Sorry if I’m starting a hijack, but if you find a hotel in the City of London, you really won’t need to worry about being in a weekend tourist desert, or in a weeknight pub/restaurant full of bankers. For the pubs at least, you’re more likely to run into a construction worker than a banker. And I’m not sure why someone would worry about being in a pub/restaurant frequented by bankers. Would you worry about being in a pub/restaurant frequented by receptionists?
For the weekends, you will find that City of London cafes that target lunchtime crowds are closed. However, most of the ones around tourist attractions will be open, and it won’t be a problem at all finding a place to grab a bite to eat.
The real question for the OP is how much walking do you plan to do and what kind of sights are you interested in? There are several great walks in the City of London, but they’re focused on old buildings, churches, or the river Thames. It’s a great place for wandering around if you like those things. But if you’re more interested in museums, shopping or nightlife, I’d recommend staying further west.
I’ll make the point that I’ve made in the other thread I linked to
I’m always of the opinion that, unless you are going to be staying right by the places you want to visit (and those are the only places you are going to visit) then trying to get a downtown accommodation is an unncessary expense in somewhere like Rome or London.
Staying just a little further out cuts hundreds off your accommodation costs, you can get bigger and better places to stay and with the tourist spots you want to hit being so spread out anyway it really doesn’t affect the amount of travelling you do.
i.e. If you are staying in Covent Garden and spending most of the day in Kensington then you’ve got a walk and tube to take anyway, no different than if you’d stayed further out.
Of course if you can find a place with pleasant strolling surroundings and amenities then that’s great but unless you are fixated on visiting just the one specific area of London then you’ll find that, even if you get a hotel right next to, say, Trafalgar square, you are going to be zipping around a lot by tube and bus anyway. One extra 15 minute tube ride at the beginning and end of each day becomes no great hardship.
I think the problem with staying further out is that in the evenings, unless you know the area you’re booking, you might end up in a dull suburb without many amenities. One of the joys of a city break is wandering around in the evenings, going to the theatre or a comedy show and eating out in great restaurants. Just a bit trickier if you end up somewhere without much of a nightlife.
Of course it can be done, but if you’re not familiar with London, it’s just a bit more of a risk.
I don’t think anyone’s is suggesting that you stay out as far as (shudder) Ealing. But there’s a significant hotel price differential between the hyper-expensive central area and even just a few stops away at (say) Earls Court to the West or Clerkenwell to the East.
Made me laugh as I used to live in Ealing. I moved out pretty quickly!
(I hate Earls Court, full of take away joints and gangs of foreign students, which goes back to my original point)
Yeah, I was born there.
Sure, if you absolutely must have those amenities within walking distance of your doorstep then that limits your options and you need to choose very carefully (and of course run those thoughts past the good people of the dope).
But being prepared to take a 15 minute tube journey and then walking around the busier and more famous areas, that opens up a world of cheaper opportunities.
That’s my admittedly biased opinion anyway, I’m not in the slightest bit interested in sleeping right in the centre of any city I visit. Even when it happens for work and I’m not even paying for it, it annoys me that I’m not getting value for money.
(I’d rather save the cash on accommodation and spend it on great food and entertainment instead)
You could stay in Crawley, from only $51 a night!
Years ago, Mrs. J. and I wound up in a hotel in Crawley our first night in England, for reasons not fully remembered except that we had a package accommodation deal and there was a coupon for that place. I remember the customs guy at the airport asking us where we were staying, and when I said “Crawley” he gave me a fishy look.
With all its cultural history!
Stratford-upon-Avon, eat your heart out.