Are London hotels as expensive as people say?
While the common perception is that London hotels are pricey, is this really true?
“Expensive” means something different to everyone. Often you can spend a lot of money and think it was brilliant, while at other times just the opposite is true. Cheap is not always best.
What then does the hard data say? London apparently has the 5th most expensive hotels in the world, after Moscow, New York, Dubai and Venice (source: Hotels.com survey).
Another survey by Hogg Robinson showed London hotel prices in 10th place (not as dear as New York, Mumbai and Stockholm among others).
Why is London relatively expensive? It appears that plenty of tourists and businesspeople want to visit the city. This of course unfortunately means that prices stay firm.
But there is good news too. You can still grab value for money in London hotels but only if you search carefully. To achieve this, you should use independent blogs (such as London Hotels Insight) rather than hotel or booking websites which just want you to reserve any hotel as quickly as possible.
There’s further good news: in another survey the Economist looked at the most expensive cities overall (not just for hotel costs) and found Oslo, Paris and Copenhagen significantly dearer than London.
Hence although London (and its hotels) may appear quite pricey to visitors, this must be understood in comparison with other benchmark cities.
The most important advice is to always book your hotel in London after searching out the best price on the internet. If you book based on just one website’s pricing, you will almost always be missing out on the best rate.
Do not be taken in by those so-called “best rate guarantees”. They are usually covered by plenty of legal wording to make it as hard as possible for you to enforce them.
The author of this article is an “insider” within the London hotel market and knows for a fact that some hoteliers charge different rates through different websites.
There is just one way to ensure that you obtain the very best London hotel deal: you need to use a “meta-search” tool which compares lots of different websites at the same time (preferably more than 20 or 30 sites). It is now as easy to do a one-click search of many websites for the best deal as it is to search a single website.
For example, the blog on London hotels linked below searches 30+ online booking websites to identify the best London hotel rate within a matter of seconds.
A hotel meta-search engine lets you feel secure that you’re getting the best possible deal. It also means you’re left with more money to enjoy London’s amazing bars, restaurants and theatres!
