U.K. and Ireland - London for a week

I am heading off to London for a week, but I have yet to book a place to stay. I can crash at a friends, but would rather have my own bed. Any reccos? Looking to spend under $1,000 total.

Does waiting to the night of ever help? Simply walking into a hotel and saying, do you have any rooms, I'll give you XYZ to stay?

On this UK & Ireland forum have you searched for "London Hotel" ?
The question gets asked VERY often

Does waiting to the night of ever help? Simply walking into a hotel and saying, do you have any rooms, I'll give you XYZ to stay?

The only way I've been able to leverage this is via sites like lastminute.com who offer opaque rates at some properties. They're branded as top secret hotels, but a bit of googling can usually show you what it is you're getting.

£100/nt incl all taxes (so that's around your budget) will often get you the Grange St Pauls or Hilton Tower Bridge, but you won't get this for a week booking an advance.

London also has some big squeezes on accommodation at times - Wimbledon fortnight (late June/early July) and then this year the Olympics (late July-mid August) will be obvious pinch points - certainly don't expect any bargains then.

priceline.com (http://priceline.com) or hotwire.com (http://hotwire.com) can often get you very good "opaque" rates on hotels - I've had a lot of success in the past with priceline in particular, often at the last minute.

Check out the betterbidding.com (http://betterbidding.com) forum which tracks successful priceline and hotwire hotel bids/purchases.

In a city like London it can sometimes help to split up your stay into separate, 2-4 night bids to get the cheapest rates. Some hotels tend to fill up mid-week with business travellers where as others are busiest around the weekends with leisure travellers.

I would not recommend just showing up without a booking - you could waste a lot of time this way and end up paying fairly high rack rates anyway!

Less than $1000 for a week's hotel accommodation in London doesn't buy you an awful lot. Depending on where you need to be, I'd tend to go for the budget chain Premier Inn ( http://www.premierinn.com ) where you tend to get reasonably good quality at a low price, and you kind of know what you're getting. Still would be tight to get a week at under $1000 even with them, though, but certainly do-able.

Alternatively, if you need to pick a certain location, try http://www.ukhotel.com as that site offers price comparison look-ups if you enter your preferred dates.

Do you have to be based close to the centre?

If not then the further out you go the cheaper it'll get. The city has good transport links so it might be worth your while looking for something near a tube station in less salubrious surroundings. That's what we do if we're not prepared to pay top whack in a city just to be in the centre.

They're branded as top secret hotels, but a bit of googling can usually show you what it is you're getting.
Lastminute also allows you to sort by distance from a given point, so look for named hotels the same distance from the Top Secret Hotel

But it can be a lot easier just to use This (http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=536015)

a few "hotels" at earls court runs for sub 50GBP for a single room....

How much do you like the colour Orange?

From the folks who brought you EasyJet, there is EasyHotel... (http://www.easyhotel.com/hotels.html)

http://www.londontoolkit.com/mnu/london_hotel_accom.htm might also be worth a look. It's also useful for finding hotels near LHR and LGW.

I have friends who have had good luck using airbnb.com to locate accommodations in London.
:)

The County Hotel and Royal National Hotel are both quite cheap.

From the folks who brought you EasyJet, there is EasyHotel... (http://www.easyhotel.com/hotels.html)

£5 per night to rent the TV remote control :)

£5 per night to rent the TV remote control :)

Yes, I saw that. I wonder if a universal remote would activate the TV?:confused:


You also pay to have the room cleaned if staying multiple days, pay for towels.


A little off topic...
It is an interesting business model, you pay for what you really want. I took three cruises with easyCruise when it was running; the first year they ran, I got a cabin on the boat for $10/night and cruised around the Caribbean based in Barbados, the next year $20/night based in St. Maarten, the final time for about $25/might around the Ionian, Greece, and the Cyclades. I had an incredible trip each time; the cabins were small but clean, most without windows, but the best part was that the boat got into port at about 7am and left after 10pm, so you had the whole day to explore the area. There was a small, moderate priced restaurant and a coffee shop on board to buy whatever food you wanted, and, like the easyHotel, you payed for each time you wanted the cabin cleaned, or for extra/clean towels, and for other amenities. It actually worked perfectly! I'm disappointed it is no longer running - obviously Stelios wasn't making money from it.

I suspect from the pictures that easyHotel has the same sort of accommodations; spare, but modern, extremely clean, and comfortable, if all you want is a good place to sleep.