I have found a great rate for this hotel in expensive London. 109£/ night for 6 nights including breakfast, 3 dinners and free WIFI. Can anyone recommend this hotel?

As posted on your other thread:

<<Author: janisj
Date: 11/01/2007, 10:18 pm
The Hilton is fine - but do you really want to stay in Paddington??

I'm sorry - but I'd personally pick a convenient location over free wifi evey time . . . . .>>

I haven't stayed at that hotel, but would not want to feel 'tied' to eating dinner at the hotel 3 times. Part of my fun in London is exploring different eateries.

We have enjoyed wi-fi in our hotels in Europe and have often paid for it. Even Starbucks wi-fi is not free. In London our hotel wi-fi was very expensive and we signed up for a T-Mobile account in the Starbucks across the street. We were fortunate that T-Mobile ended up being the same provider in our next 2 UK hotels, so we could use the account in our rooms.

As much as we like the convenience of wi-fi, however, I agree with janisj that I wouldn't sacrifice a great hotel location in a European city just for a free computer connection in a less desirable location. On road trips in the US, yes, it is a big factor for me (and the cheap chain hotels in the US really do have free wi-fi - and free breakfast - more frequently than the more expensive ones.)

janisj - My entire issue here is cost.

I am used to staying in much better hotels for much less money in Europe.

In Budapest I paid 120E/night at the Maxmilian which is an incredible hotel.

The thought of paying $220/night for a hotel in the league of the Morgan is vexing.

I leave you with a short poem I learned as a child that describes my situation:

.....Two little kittens sitting on a fence,

.....Trying to make a quarter out of 15 cents.

<<Author: janisj
Date: 11/01/2007, 10:18 pm
The Hilton is fine - but do you really want to stay in Paddington??

I'm sorry - but I'd personally pick a convenient location over free wifi evey time . . . . .>>

I have not stayed in the hotel , but it is hardly an inconvenient location:
HEX is at your door ,

and also 4 or 5 tube lines. You can walk to Hyde Park and "Little Venice' in lovely Maida Vale.
There are many ethnic restaurants in the area , a long walk or a short bus ride will get you to the trendy Nothing Hill Gate.
By the way - those who thumb down their noses at Paddington, if you are ever in London and take a look at some areas of Paddington not far west west of the station, you will see 2 bdm apartments listed for sale at over a million pounds!

Mile for mile, the Hex is one of the most expensive transit options there is. It is fine IF one is staying in Paddington. But for anywhere else in the city, using the Hex would mean queueing and taking an expensive taxi - or schlepping on the tube to get to the final destination. Paddington isn't near any major tourist attractions except Hyde Park.

Basically one has to take the tube or buses to get anywhere that visitors would want to be . . . .

Nothing at all wrong w/ parts of Paddington - to live. But it really is not the most convenient area for visitors.

"Mile for mile, the Hex is one of the most expensive transit options there is. It is fine IF one is staying in Paddington."

Well, that is where the Paddington hotel is. No?

yep. But my point was - if one wants to stay in a nicer neighborhood closer to the major sites - the Hex is very expensive and only get one half way.

But if one feels wifi is more important than staying in a lovely neighborhood - go for it . . . .

If cost is your main concern WTF are you even mentioning the HEX which as janisj ays is EXPENSIVE

If you want to find cheap AND don't want to travel every time you do something more than get a morning newspaper then stay in Earls Court / South Kensington / Victoria all of which are convenient for tourist sights, Heathrow Airport and will work out cheaper

I think for London, this is a pretty good rate for a decent business-class hotel. Does it include VAT (about 17%, I think)? Most London hotel rates do, but I notice that many corporate hotel sites do not (I don't recall if Hilton is like this or not).

But before accepting this deal, I would try for a 4* bid on Priceline in a more central area. Or I would try two separate 4* bids, because a stay of 6 nights might be hard to get. (Actually, I'd also try a 3* bid in a central area, but this is seen as too adventurous by many.) I'd also check Hotwire. (See many posts on this forum, Betterbidding.com and BiddingforTravel.com ).

Price out what the breakfast, dinners, and WIFI are worth to you. Also price out what the lost commute time, compared to a very central location, is worth to you.

If you are, by chance, including a daytrip that involves going by train from Paddington Station, then that would be another factor favoring this hotel. If this hotel is as nice as I'd expect a Hilton to be, I can understand why you might prefer it over "budget" hotel options, even if more central, but I don't know the other hotels you were considering.

Let's get this location thing straight.

If you're counting the pennies, Paddington is inconvenient because you can get to it from Heathrow only by tube, and you've got to change tube trains to do so. The Heathrow Express is fine: but it's not for you.

So the question then is: are places close to Piccadilly Line tube station (the one that goes stright to LHR) better?

Personally, I'd say no: the tourist ghettoes round Russell Square and Gloucester Rd tube stations are just about as anonymous as the area round Paddington. True, as damon says, there are indigents round Paddington who can only afford a million quid for a flat: but there are lots of decent houses and flats costing four or five million quid too, though the recent arrival of Tony Blair into one of them has rather brought the neighbourhood down (and the density of police with machine guns up). Some of my (self-proclaimed) poshest friends - live in the pleasant squares around the station, and they really wouldn't live anywhere else, apart from their houses in the Cotswolds, the West Indies or Tuscany.

Paddington is fine as a location for some people: it's on top of the canal system, with fascinating strolls. You can walk from this hotel to Liverpool without ever using a road, and as the hotel's about a hundred yards from Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, you can walk to a huge slug of central London by traffic-free routes too. The local restaurants are mediocre: only the Jamuna in Southwick St takes food seriously, and it's probably out of your price bracket, but most other ethnics are passable. The local fish and chip places are probably the worst in London.

But by no reckoning is this a poor location: indeed for many people coming here on business, it's arguably the best location imaginable

I've not stayed in the hotel, but use it frequently for its toilets, sitting-down possibilities and convenience for meetings. I rarely buy tea in British hotels, but if the price this Hilton charges me for a cup is typical of their charging policies, make sure you buy bothing - not even a bottle of water - with those "free" dinners, or you'll end up spending more on extras than the £100 a night you're spending to stay there. The restaurant looks boring, but the place is clean and handy. You'll obviously get more about the hotel from Tripadvisor, though.

But all said, don't fret location in London. It's practically impossible for a visitor to book, accidentally, a knocking shop in Finsbury Park, and practically eveverywhere else is a few yards from a tube. And this place is better located for the rest of London than practically anywhere else.

Flanner, as good as that summary is, is it possible you have so much experience with London that you might not think about it quite the same as a first-time or just-a-few-times tourist?

Being right smack in the center and being able to walk home from the theatres in 5-15 minutes is great. Of course, as I sometimes do, if one chooses a non-central theatre, this won't be possible, but that probably won't be the majority of nights. With the location we had on our last trip (on High Holborn), probably about 75-80% of London's major sites in Westminster, the City, Bloomsbury, Camden, South Kensington, Waterloo, and Southwark were within a 15-30 minute walk. This was not of particular help when my daughter developed a deep interest in Hackney, but otherwise our location had numerous plusses and few minuses.

Now from what you have posted about Paddington, I could see staying in that area and pursuing a different sort of trip than the standard tourist trip, but if I did want a standard tourist trip, I'd choose a location like I had the last time. And even though I'd visited London quite a bit in the past, I still had so many standard tourist things I liked to do.

When ? It's not a bad rate if it's a reasonably busy time of year.

The last time we went to London (early June) we stayed there and were very pleased with it at £63pn, double, RO (booked through www.lastminute.com c.2-3 weeks beforehand). We thought we would not have been disappointed had we been paying £100.

I would not want to eat dinner at a hotel, though.

Personally I find Paddington very convenient - walkable for some things, lots of tube lines for others - but I guess I'm mostly not be going to the same places as a tourist. I would not want to stay in Earls Court, South Kensington or Victoria.

For another budget-ish option, have you looked at the County Hall Travel Inn ?

London is such a large place with tourist attractions "bunched" in different parts of the city .
It is really hard to avoid talking the tube .
If you are near the British Museum , the Houses of Parliament are too far. If your hotel is in Soho, try walking to the Tower!. If you stay near High Street Kensington , visiting Tate Modern will not be a stroll.
Let's face it : get the best hotel you can afford , purchase the Oyster card
and be prepared to travel on public transit ( and walk a lot)

My husband has stayed there and it's a perfectly decent hotel...however, the least expensive rooms are quite small. But for that rate, unless you Priceline, you're not going to get reliable business class hotels in most of central London.
That the rate includes dinners is odd...breakfast I can understand, but dinner? Skip the dinners, even if they are included.

I would also disagree about it being an inconvenient location. Most of my days in London start at Paddington and it's no big deal to get from there to anywhere I want to go. The #15 bus stops right outside the Hilton and takes you on much of the same route as the sightseeing buses. (If you're in town for a week, you'll probably have travel with with the Oyster pass). It's a short ride on the Bakerloo line to Oxford or Picadilly Circus(es). An even shorter ride to Marylebone. Plus it's a great location if you decide to daytrip to Bath, Oxford or even Windsor.

It wouldn't be my first choice of hotels if I had a budget of over £200 per night. But for £109 per night including breakfast, it's certainly an acceptable choice.

Thanks to all for your prompt and learned responses.

To clarify: We have a reservation at the Rhoads Hotel for 80£/night which is located in Paddington, and includes breakfast, air, and WIFI. It is a budget hotel with small rooms but has all the bells and whistles. It is #103/1016 with Tripadvisor.

I have also reserved the Morgan hotel near Russel Square for 105£. It has air, breakfast and free WIFI in some lower floor rooms. We have reserved one of those rooms. This hotel is #22/1016 in Tripadvisor.

I considered the Luna and Simone hotel(#7/1016,90&pound but was discouraged with their WIFI supplier.


The Hilton Paddington is #127/1016 in Tripadvisor and the price quoted includes VAT and all taxes.


Is Paddington similar to staying near the Train station in Rome or the area east of Bastille in Paris? Not the most attractive area but convenient and less expensive?

I think Paddington ( except for a few streets right next to the station )is very nice. Five minutes north of the station is "little Venice" - canals with house boats ( more like Amsterdam) with several restaurants, pubs and beautiful, million plus homes of Maida Vale.
It is a nice place in the evening after walking the streets of London.
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are
five minutes away. One can walk through the park to Albert Hall in 10 minutes or to Marble Arch in 15-20.

the poster isn't talking about posh areas like Little Venice or Maida Vale (though MV is a nice area, it definitely isn't convenient for tourists)

He is talking about the hilton right AT Paddington Station and the Rhodes Hotel in Sussex Gardens on Talbot Sq -- i.e. right next to the station

&quot;<i>I think Paddington (<b>except for a few streets right next to the station</b is very nice.</i>&quot;

It is one of many virtually identical B&amp;B hotels near Paddington w/ it's basement breakfast room. One odd thing about its website - they talk about being near Paddington Green Police station - which isn't really all that close. But why would a B&amp;B tout proximity to a high security police station?? Seems an odd thing to recommend it . . . .

The Hilton at Paddington station is FIVE minutes away ( on foot) from 'little Venice&quot;. No, it is not a tourist attraction , but after looking at buildings and museums all day, it is a nice spot to have a drink and relax by the water.
Perhaps, after living in London for a short time some years ago ( just north of MV), and visiting many times, I have forgotten the relentless drive most tourist have to run from &quot;attraction&quot; to &quot;attraction&quot; without ever considering a walk through a park or spending some time in an area without a building with a long queue in front of it.

I think Paddington (except for a few streets right next to the station) is very nice.&quot;
BTW
I was referring to Paddington area NOT recommending staying in some B&amp;B !