London is expensive – often horrendously so. But few people want to stay in a cheap hotel which looks and feels like one.
My top 10 money-saving tips are based on the inside knowledge I’ve gained. These ideas are based on finding ‘best for your budget’ rather than the outright cheapest places to stay – everyone has a different price and quality tolerance threshold. And I haven’t shied away from naming specific hotels which I feel offer consistent value.
Check out my top tricks and sneaky ways you can score a cheap hotel room in London. Book yourself a bargain today.
1. Book Sunday nights
This is traditionally the cheapest night at any London hotel – falling in the gap between the hotelier’s sweet spots of the expense-account corporate stay (Monday to Thursday) and the leisure weekend away (Friday and Saturday).
If you really want to treat yourself even ultra-deluxe hotels like Claridge’s often offer surprisingly attractive Sunday night rates – check the hotel website or better still, call directly since they may prefer not to publicise their rock-bottom rates.
Mention if you plan to take afternoon tea or eat at the restaurant since this can increase your clout. The good old telephone is still a handy tool for securing a good rate.
2. Know where to find best value
A bit of extra thought and research can get you a great deal – it’s often all about the timing. For example, hotels in the city see a big drop-off on weekends.
This gives you the potential to get a fantastic deal for a weekend stay even within zone 1 or 2 of the tube map. Apex City of London and Pestana Chelsea Bridge are good examples – they’ll often give you brilliant 4 star deluxe hotel rooms at a budget rate if you cherry pick your dates cleverly.
Or stop off in Canary Wharf over a weekend – cutting-edge modern architecture, good restaurants, peace and great value.
Also do also target new hotels (plenty are coming on stream) especially where they lack brand recognition – think for example of new hotels near the Olympic park for example.
3. Email your chosen hotels with an online challenge
Find the best available rate online across several sites using Google, or use a meta-search tool which searches several sites simultaneously, like the one on a comparison website like Booking.com.
Do take account of glitches in presentation – for example, some sites will sneakily display rates without VAT. Once you’ve displayed the results, you may want to contact the hotels directly with your findings (preferably with screenshots of your quotes handily pasted in for them) and see if they’ll match or offer extras as an incentive to book direct.
Logically, they should play ball since they’ll be saving anywhere between 10 and 25% on third-party agent commissions.
4. Sign up for special offers and flash sales
This is a matter of getting on the mailing lists for Travelodge, Premier Inn, Hoxton Hotel, Tune Hotels, Apex Hotels and other companies that offer limited-time room sales with eye-catching discounts. Watch out for all the above companies’ Twitter feeds to be notified of more spontaneous offers.
5. Think “boutique budget”
Expensive tastes without the budget to match? Fortunately there is a new breed of London hotels reinventing our notion of what you can get without paying a fancy rate. You’ll often receive a lovely room with a plasma screen and free WiFi – but often without unnecessary extras, like a hotel restaurant.
Rough Luxe, the Hoxton Hotel (before its recent sale at least), Base2stay (though not as cheap as it once was), Dean Street Townhouse, Z Hotel Soho, YOTEL and Aloft London Excel are solid examples which I’d recommend.
6. Choose big hotels (in terms of number of rooms) for steeply discounted rates
Big hotels have more rooms to fill, so will often offer the steepest discounts. Follow the “online challenge” approach explained above with the following huge hotels: Hilton Metropole, Holiday Inn Kensington Forum, the Cumberland Hotel, Park Plaza Westminster Bridge and Royal National Hotel. These hotels have a thousand rooms or more to fill and are only likely to be 100% occupied on rare occasions.
7. Stay in London’s suburbs and beyond
Harrow, Wembley and Watford are all on the Metropolitan line – the north-western section of the London tube system which often runs fast trains into central London (Watford also benefits from an overground connection to Euston which takes as little as 15 minutes).
Croydon is another suburban value oasis – with a good choice of budget hotels just a brisk 20 minute train ride into town.
More imaginative tourists might also wish to stay in the charming market town of Guildford (Surrey) with its lovely restaurants, countryside and pubs – where Radisson Edwardian have built a swanky new Guildford hotel. It’s about 30 minutes from central London but the rates are significantly lower.
8. Use a special offer from an independent hotel group for luxury on a budget
Independent hotel groups in London tend to offer the best deals for luxury seekers – companies like Radisson Edwardian and Red Carnation Hotels benefit from the scale of big brands but with the character of individual hotels (both are family-owned companies).
Such privately-owned chains often punch above their weight in terms of service and value. I’d particularly recommend the current special offers at The Rubens Hotel for example or the London hotel deals available at the moment at Radisson Edwardian Hotels.
9. Book a B&B
Bay Tree House has been the number 1 B&B on TripAdvisor for as long as I can remember. Go through the a list of B&Bs on websites like TripAdvisor and see which are offering the best deal at the moment – you could save big bucks on a hotel while enjoying a significantly more personal and fun stay in an interesting part of town that reflects an authentic, everyday London.
10. Book Easy
Easy Hotels is an ultra-cheap hotel chain which charges for extras, but in a friendly, transparent way. There are lots of travel blogger reviews of Easy Hotels online and YouTube if you want to have a look.
Easy rooms are perfectly clean and serviceable (albeit quite small – especially the bathrooms) and their two London locations are central. I’ve consistently found them to be the cheapest “decent” (i.e. clean, reliable) hotels in London.
Refreshingly, they promise to stay cheap and not try to sneak upmarket as the likes of Premier Inn have done… I hope they stick to that commitment.
