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London Hotels

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London Hotel Reviews

You'll find many things in London hotels: luxury, extraordinary service, and incredible views. But one thing you'll look long and hard for is a bargain. Rooms have traditionally been expensive, and the wild swings of the exchange rate make it hard to predict just how much you'll end up paying. Meanwhile, the London hotel market is ignoring the credit crunch and focusing on luxury, luxury, luxury. Five-star hotels close, renovate, and reopen at a dizzying pace, most of them raising their prices at the end of the process. If it's any consolation, London does luxury better than just about any city, so you'll get your money's worth.

For those on more moderate budgets, the situation is in transition. The city is still struggling to develop a solid base of moderately priced high-quality hotels. Two places that have opened in recent years—the Hoxton and Guesthouse West—are great options in this category. A newly attractive alternative are hotels in the Premier and Millennium chains, which offer sleek, modern rooms, lots of modern conveniences, and sales that frequently bring room prices well below £100 a night. The Best Western Premier Shaftesbury Kensington and Millennium Gloucester are both good examples.

At the budget level, small bed-and-breakfasts still dominate, although most are quite battered and basic. An alternative to that is the easyHotel chain, with its tiny, bright orange "pod" rooms. There's also the more sophisticated (and more expensive) base2stay, which falls somewhere between budget and not so much. And even at the very bottom of the price scale, accommodations can be unexpectedly trendy—just look at the slick simplicity of the Generator hostel.

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