Decent walking distance hotel in London
 

Hi just enquiring if anyone can recommend a decent hotel within walking distance of attractions in London for around 40-45pound pernight.
Wil be staying there for 4 nights late March 2006.
Many thanks in advance

of course it depends which attractions you are talking about. I doubt whether you will get a hotel in central London, ie walking distance of many central attractions for anything under 100 pounds a night let alone 40 - 45. You may have to spend more or travel more. Look at discountcityhotels.com and see what they have.

Is it just you or for a couple? Do you mean 40£ to 45£ per person or per room? If you mean £80 to £90 for two people sharing there are many to choose from. But there aren't many decent £40 hotel rooms in London.

You could try priceline - but it is a bit too early to bid PL for next March. On PL you can get decent rooms for less than $100 (about £55 - £60)

As for "walking distance" to attractions -- London is a HUGE city and the major sites are spread over a very wide area. No single neighborhood is w/i walking distance of all or even most of the attractions.

But the buses/tube are very convenient -- even w/ the current disruptions you can easily get just about anywhere from any central location.

Thanks for your replies schnauzer and janis.

I guess i should have been a little more specific.

I have been looking on the net and searching activehotels.com and there are quite a few hotels i have seen like the regent palace etc which are sort of centrally located in piccadilly i guess i am looking at piccadilly, marble arch, westminster, and tavistock areas as far as locations.

i have seen that there are quite a few which have doubles from around 45pounds per nite up to around 65 pounds per nite if you book off the net.

Trouble is most of these hotels have many bad reviews ie noise and security.

I know if i go a little further out of the main city area like Earls court they seem to be of a better quality for the same price but i am not sure how far they are from attractions.

So any experience with any budget hotels within the areas I have listed would be great.

Thanks again for your replies.

London is a big city so finding somewhere within walking distance of most attractions is not really a necessity. The public transport options are numerous so provided you find somewhere that is a good location, you will be okay.

With your budget, I would think about trying Priceline. You are looking 8 months out from your stay which is a long time but people have been winning the Thistle Marble Arch for $56 and up which is within your budget and is a perfectly adequate hotel in a good location. Look at www.biddingfortravel.com and www.betterbidding.com for help on Priceline bidding. You probably won't be able to get a win more than about 5 months from your stay but you can always try.

Haven't got a London Underground map to hand this very moment, but maybe have a look at which area has the better underground connections, some stations are on better lines, ie Picadilly, I think Marble ARch would be pretty good as well. Westminster could be a little harder, but hey, we are really splitting hairs here. Did you look at the discountcityhotel.com site? It is worth a look. I have used it very successfully, we stayed on Grosvenor Square but it was more than your budget. That was a very convenient location though. keep looking you'll get there. You are going in March, so hanging around waiting for buses at night is probably not what you want, get near a tube station. Definately a warmer option.

There is a very good reason the Regent Palace and some of the others have bad reviews -- they are DREADFUL hotels. Avoid the Regent Palace at all costs. It is MASSIVE, full of backpacking youth groups, is noisy, and the majority of rooms don't have bathrooms.

In general, the most convenient areas will be in South Kensington, Victoria and (once all the tube lines are back in full operation) Russell Square. Other neighborhoods are also convenient - but each of these have a good selection of accomodations in all price ranges. There is no need to stay in flop houses or in inconvenient areas.

If you want to know if a hotel is in a good area, ask here - just because a hotel is "central" does not mean it is someplace you should stay.

Again - Priceline will let you stay in a very nice hotel for about what you'd have to pay for a dump like the R. Palace. Now, most folks on here only bid 4 or 5 star hotels on PL, but there are also 3 star properties. A 3 star hotel will be quite nice, though not luxurious, and cost less than some of the cheap hotels you are looking at.

We have stayed at the St Athans on Tavistock. It was 55 pounds with breakfast for a triple. It is best described as a family hostel (no a/c, bath down the hall, etc).

The Holiday Inn Kensington Forum is centrally located, within walking distance to the V&A, Natural History, etc. museums as well as many other places, and is one block from the Gloucester Road tube station. It can usually be bought per night from Priceline for $75 or $85 (USD). This is a nice, 3** hotel that is truly a bargain in London.

March should be no problem insofar as reservations go. In your place I would make a reservation elsewhere right now, then in October or November start thinking about Priceline bidding. You can inform yourself about the bidding process by going to www.biddingfortravel.com If you do your homework and then ask the appropriate questions, a board monitor there will help you with a bidding strategy. I have never needed that level of assistance as their explanations are so clear. Good luck planning your trip!

We've stayed at the Cherry Court Hotel in Victoria Station before, and are going again in September. The rooms are small, but it's clean, comfortable and safe. The price is $55-60 British Pounds for a double. For the location, I've had a hard time finding anything better. You can walk to Buckingham Palace and Westminster easily from there.

http://www.cherrycourthotel.co.uk/

Hi Trip2006

I recently stayed at the Travel House Hotel in Notting Hill, paying around 50GBP for a twin room withou breakfast. But the room had a refrigerator, microwave oven and a sink, which was great: you can prepare your own breakfast (I hate English breakfast, too greasy for my taste), and supper (if you are really on a tight budget). The Hotel is half a block from the Notting Hill Tube Station, and walking distance to Hide Park, Kensington Gardens, VIctoria and Albert Hall, Museum of Natural History, Bayswater shopping area, etc The only bad thing about the hotel is that it does not have telephones in the rooms.

I forgot to say that the Hotel is practically two steps from Portobello Market...

Since Tube and bus routes are in abundance, you should choose a hotel based on <i>value</i>, not location. All the sights are the same total distance from wherever you sleep.

If you have a PDA (you can get one for $30 on eBay) or SmartPhone, you can acquire a free program called <b>M&eacute;tro</b>* that will compute the optimal public transit route between stations (and sights) in London.

Here is a map of the city showing the bus routes serving the major sights:

<b>http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/cen_bus.pdf
</b>

* http://www.nanika.net/metro (They've even published a special database to route you around the closed stations!)

You can cut time spent travelling each day if you find a hotel on the District line or the bus routes that lie between Temple and Gloucester Road. At your low price that means somewhere near Victoria, such as on Ebury Street, a street of small hotels, though you might look at prices for the Travellers Inn in County Hall and the Royal Adelphi hotel beside Charing Cross station, both ten minutes more central than Victoria.

Earls Court, Tavistock Square, Russell Square, Notting Hill and Earls Court would all add to your travel time: Portobello Road is well out. The Piccadilly line runs through fewer tourist attractions than does the District line.

Welcome to London

Ben Haines
[email protected]

As a Londoner, I would always opt for Marble Arch over Victoria - it is extremely central just at the top end of Oxford Street. Parts of Victoria are not that nice. Kensington is good if you like good access to the museums. Lancaster Gate is another area where you might find some competitively priced hotels.

Actually - for a Londoner, Marble Arch IS quite central. But for a tourist Victoria or South Kensington are actually more centrally located.

M. Arch is really only walkable from Hyde Park and the madness of Oxford St., and is only on one tube line so there are multiple lines changes to get to most tourist sites.

S Kens is walkable to the Parks, the V&amp;A/Natural/Science museums, Harrods, Kens Palace, and is on 3 very useful tube lines.

And Victoria is walking distance to B'ham Palace, Tate Britain, the river, the river taxi to the Eye and Tate Modern, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Chelsea hospital, is on 3 tube lines plus a main line station and Victoria coach station.

To Brazilnut - do you have a website for the Travel House Hotel? Who did you book through? That sounds like the sort of place we are after - central, budget priced and we can prepare some meals. Most apartments with kitchen facilities are much dearer than that. Was it also clean? Was there anything you didn't like about it?
Thanks, Kay

Hi Kay,

The rooms are cleaned everyday, and there are minisoap bars, shampoo, shower caps, etc in the bathroom. There is a TEXCO market about a block from the hotel where you can stock up.

As to the reservations, I think I go them through

www.ratestogo.com

But you probably can also get to it if you google the name &quot;travel house hotel&quot; or &quot;cheap hotels london&quot;.

Good luck,

Cecilia

The Travel House is a good budget hotel to be sure. It offers good value and you will probably enjoy staying there. BUT it is definitely not central. It is in Notting Hill on the far west end of central London. You asked for properties w/i walking distance of attractions - well this one isn't.

You could walk to Kensington Gardens/Palace and, on Saturdays, Portobello Rd market. That's about it. Everything else will be a fairly long tube or bus trip.

I'm not trying to talk you out of booking there - just don't think it is &quot;central&quot;.

(the nearby supermarket is a Tesco)

Janis is right: Notting Hill is not a Central Area, but I found it to be very convenient to get to most places, particulary as it is on the Central Line. But you need to verify if is it back on service?

Maybe I should have stressed that my friend and I like to walk, so it did not seem too far for us to walk from our hotel to Bayswater, Harrods (on Knightsbridge), etc.

But my suggestion was mainly based on value concerns, not so much on distance to major tourist attractions.

P.S.: Janis is also right as to &quot;Tesco&quot; (and not &quot;Texco&quot; as I wrote before, sorry; English is not my first language).