London hotels for October trip -- need advice please!
 

Hi all,
A friend and I are headed to London the second week of October and we are trying to decide on a hotel. We are debating booking a package through British Airways or United, or if the price is right, just booking everything separate ourselves. The flight from Chicago will arrive at Heathrow so we are looking at hotels that are convenient to Paddington or along the circle/district tube lines (we will be taking the Heathrow express). Any feedback or advice on the following hotels would be helpful, or if there are any reasonably priced, but immaculately clean accomodations not listed, please do let us know! We have travelled in Europe before so we are aware of the difference between American and British hotels -- we would just like a room that is very clean and that has private facilities.
Jolly Hotel St. Ermins
Thistle Westminster
Thistle Victoria
Thistle Kensington Gardens
Millenium Baileys
Royal Lancaster

Thanks in advance!!
Liza

Hi, Liza

If you will enter the name of a hotel in the search box at the top of this page, then go to your right and click "enter" you will probably find more comments than you need.

Be safe and have a great trip!

Hi Liza,

We're staying at the Millennium Bailey's in a few weeks. I'll be happy to let you know how it is. We've never stayed there before, but after lots of research, and feedback from Fodorites, we picked it. I think it will be great. Now if the weather will just cool off a bit. :)

Also, has anyone found it to be a hassle to be north of Hyde Park on the central line? Would we just be better off staying south of the park?
Thanks for the responses and jon, yes, please do let me know how you liked hte Millenium Baileys!

I am going to London next month and Millenium Bailey's is top on my list - largely due to feedback from this site - and I got the best price on their own website - breakfast and dinner included. Location seems great.

I stayed in Russell Square which is very centrally located in London. My brother in law is from there and found a place called the Russell House and it's right next door to the Russel Square Tube stop. It's clean with a decent breakfast, tho' not fabulous, and a bathroom. Relatively clean and serviceable. Nothing fancy at all but who stays in their room? I had my whole family (5)stay there for a whole week. You're withing walking distance to the British Museum in case it rains and not far at all from the whole Picadilly Circus, Oxford Circle, etc. I loved the location.

I will also be staying at the Millennium Bailey's in September, based on feedback on this site and reviews on tripadvisor.com.

Maureens, just curious did you get that rate from their site and if so, when did you book it? I just booked two days ago and didn't see that awesome offer!

lemon: The rate was 144GBP 2 nights and 114GBP for 3 - since I had started at 5 star hotels and quickly worked down, the rate seemed good to me. Eating out in lots of restaurants is not high on my list so having the same fare for a few days is fine by me, with a few pub lunches and at least one decent afternoon tea thrown in for good measure.

I suggest you look at laterooms.com
Boots

Stayed at Milleniun Bailey's this past winter on a package deal with United. Hotel was an excellent value and the location is unbeatable. Only 50 yards from the underground station serving three lines, including the Picadilly to Heathrow. Many shops and restaurants in the area. As far as the hotel itself, it was fairly small and atmospheric. Service was excellent, breakfast good. Rooms were not elaborate but clean and comfortable. I would recommend that you contact the hotel and request a quiet room facing the inner courtyard. We did that and were glad we did. We heard other guests complaining about the noise from Gloucester Road traffic. Contact Ina Juntti [[email protected]]or Jane Crawford ([email protected]) to make the request

Many of your listed hotels have come up on Priceline, for many £s less than the quoted rates, e.g. Baily's for US$65. Check out www.biddingfortravel.com for results and pointers. For October travel I'd definitely start there.

I have friends who have stayed at Millenium Bailey's several times, they intend to go there again.
Great location, nice hotel, nice bar.

Look for comments also at tripadvisor.com
I could be wrong, but I may have seen some negative comments there about the Thistle Ken. Gardens

Hi Liza: Did a London package with Globus in April--they have several hotel choices. We chose the highest, the Royal horseguards because of the old building itself and what I think is a great location. We decided to slurge on the London portion and went cheaper on the Ireland and Scotland portions. Along the Thames, in a nice garden, across from the London Eye. Very convenient, approx. 1/2 block
from Embankment tube station and within just a couple of blocks from Trafalgar Square. Package was for flight, 6 nights hotel, huge English breakfast daily, 1/2 day London tour and transfers from Heathrow to hotel. We really liked it. There are comments on this site--just type Royal Horseguards and you will get several comments.

Thanks for the wonderful responses. I'm very tempted to try my hand at priceline after looking at the biddingfortravel website. It appears that very good prices can be had since the second week of Oct. is considered low season. Has anyone had a negative experience using priceline? I figured that if I was only bidding on 4 or 5 star hotels in a good area then the result can't be that bad. However, I am concerned that I'll end up at a hotel that is not close to a tube station.
Any feedback as to priceline and your feelings on it would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Liza

Lisa:

I'm in the same boat, only for Sept. Leaving in five weeks with no place to stay yet. Head is spinning. I'm interested in the same hotel. Have you tried Priceline?

Tia

I got the Victoria Thistle on Priceline for Nov 8 - 10 for $100.36 for all 3 nights, including all taxes. The location looks great.

We got Thistle Victoria in Sept. for 71.00 US per night. Just follow the guidlines at biddingfortravel.com and you should be fine. Also Frommers Budget Travel Magazine did an article in the last issue about several well priced hotels. I am sure you could find them on Frommers website. (ps just for the sake of not being edited ...I prefer FODORS!:-d

I meant $300.36 for 3 nights!!

check out flemings in mayfair...very convienent...we have stayed there three times and are always pleased with the location!

Well, so far no luck on priceline. I have been trying to book a 4 or 5 star room in Mayfair/Soho for the past few weeks. The room would be for the second week of October so I figured that we should have pretty good luck finding a deal. Apparently this is not the case as we have bid up to $130 and have even split our 7 day stay into two separate bids to increase our chances of getting accepted. I have pored over the biddingfortravel site many times and have incorporated all of their tips into my bidding strategy.
Is anyone else having problems getting a good deal on rooms via priceline for the first half of October?

It might be that the hotels in Mayfair-Soho have not released inventory yet. Priceline can definitely be tricky that way - as you have no way of knowing when the hotels are going to cooperate by making some low-price inventory available. It just happens all the sudden - or not.

I think if you bid in Westminster, Bloomsbury, or Mayfair-Soho you will be no more than 4 blocks from a tube station, and probably much less. There just aren't that many remote places in those zones.

I'd definitely be tempted to try other zones besides Mayfair-Soho. Just be careful to bid separately on each zone up to a specified limit. Then you can try combinations of your acceptable zones to get more rebids.

What's the lowest price you can get for an acceptable hotel outside Priceline?

hi liza,

My best friend and I are also going to london in october. We are leaving on October 15th.

I have done extensive research on hotels in london and have found some great advice here on this site.

Last year when we were orginally planning this trip, I stumbled across some great advice from one traveler that talked about the millenium hotels on gloucester, the millennium baileys and the millennium gloucester.

the baileys is a smaller more intimate hotel on the corner. he/she said it was wonderful. some of the standard rooms could be small, but the location was great, the rooms clean and presentable. the club rooms were great(they actually got an upgrade after they arrived). he/she said the rate they got on the special for the standard (about 75 pds per night per room, not including vat about 12 pds more total 87 pds) was unbeatable.

he/she said that best of all was the location. wonderfully busy neighborhood with lots of restaurants, a grocery store, shops etc. and best of all, the tube station....they walked out of the lobby across the corner and there it was! gloucester rd station. he/she said that was invaluable. this station is on the major line and is a connect to just about every other line within one stop or two.

we tried to get into baileys but were not successful for october, but it has a sister hotel right beside it called the millennium gloucester. this hotel is a mega business hotel and takes up most of the rest of the block. like the baileys it has standard and club rooms.

it is my understanding they are about the same price and the hotels are connected thru their lobbys so you are still right across from the tube station.

the difference in the rooms, well my research said that the gloucester rooms standard and club are actually larger in the m. gloucester, however the standard in gloucester can be sometimes quite used or travel worn because it is a tourist/business hotel with a huge turnover.

one of the complaints I read about a very worn room in the gloucester said that they just made a complaint and were upgraded to club, so I feel very comfortable that if the room is too worn we will have options.

Because of the accessability to the tube, the great very central neighborhood, the accessability to shops, grocery, pharmacy and restaurants, we choose to try to get into one of these hotels.

I will tell you that you need to book soon. baileys is booked for that time period, but the gloucester had rooms a few weeks ago.

finally, the standard does not include breakfast. if you choose that level, another poster said that you can walk across the street to dino's and get a full english breakfast for about 4 pds.

you just can't beat that!

ps...liza we are going to be in london from the 15th-24th. I am already trying to hook up with two other fodorite ladies during that time period for maybe a fodor a small fodor get together lunch or dinner.

if you are interested, email me at:

[email protected]

erinb

Liza, here's a link to 2 reviews of the Royal Lancaster. On the same page, Travelocity has a link for rooms there "starting at $130".

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserR...n_England.html

As to Priceline, I did some research yesterday for Tia. The 5* hotels listed on biddingfortravel in several areas besides Mayfair/Soho looked good (ie Bloomsbury, Kensington). However, there are no 5* listed for Westminster & the 4* in Bloomsbury were not all great. So, if you want to continue on your current bid process without waiting, maybe look into adding Kensington area. BTW, I think Willtravel is probably right, the hotels may not have released inventory for Oct yet. Good luck!

I have posted this a few other times - we are leaving for London later today and we booked through priceline for a 5 star Hilton in Blooms. for $110.00

Hi Liza,

Just got back from our trip and wanted to let you know how Millennium Bailey's was, as promised. As the other posters state, the location CANNOT be beat! The hotel is just a few steps from the Gloucester Rd tube stop, and there are plenty of restaurants and grocery stores nearby. There's also a Starbucks, Burger King, and KFC if you're really missing food from home. The streets are beautiful with trees and flowers. You really feel like a part of the neighborhood.

As for the hotel, we were very happy with it. We did as someone here suggested and asked for a courtyard room for quiet. Our room actually overlooked the tube station on a sidestreet, but we were on the 4th floor, so there weren't noise problems from outside. We did have a problem with an air conditioning noise, and I told the front desk about it. They tried to fix it but couldn't, so we were nicely compensated for the noise.

As for the meals, we didn't bother with getting breakfast as part of our room plan. There were plenty of places to pick up food. But we did get breakfast once and it was very nice.

I would definitely recommend this hotel. Good luck getting a room!

We were in London in June and stayed at both Jolly St. Ermins and Crown Plaza St. James Court. Both are beautiful and located very close to St. James tube station and Buckingham Palace. Nice walk through St. James Park to Picadilly and shopping. Breakfast is included at St. James Court which saved us many times from starving as we were too busy to stop & eat some days. We also passed by the Thistle Victoria every day on our way to our hotel, looks nice, I even made a note to check into it next trip. Very close to the Victoria train and coach stations if you have day trips planned as we did. Have a wonderful trip and check out one of London's oldest Pubs near all three hotels, The Albert. We spent our last night there, wish it had been our first!

Another vote for the Priceline way--we went to London last March and got the Royal Horseguards for $70 a night. It was a wonderful hotel, great location--I would definately stay there again.

There are some good suggestions here. Personally, I dog the Thistle establishment everytime I sense an unsuspecting tourist. I'll get grief for this from someone, but I would not stay at another Thistle hotel for all the free knickers at Marks & Spencers. As Betty Davis put it...and I am sure she was referring to each and every single Thistle hotel on the planet..."What a DUMP!"

I stayed at both Thistle Victoria and Millenium Bailey's hotels last fall. They were both beautiful, hospitable, and conveniently located. Millenium Bailey's is in a "quieter" section of London, in my opinion, while the Thistle has the hustle and bustle of Victoria station. While the Thistle is more in central London, the Millenium has more within walking distance.

Thanks again everyone for all of the great responses. This board has, as always, been invaluable for planning our trip.
We have had mixed luck on priceline. For the last two nights of our trip (16-17 Oct.) we got the Dolphin Square hotel in Pimlico for $85/night. We are still working on getting a hotel for the first five nights through priceline. We're holding out for a hotel more centrally located in Mayfair/Soho, though. So far we have been unsuccessful, but will probably try bidding again in a few days.
Has anyone had recent luck on priceline for October in Mayfair/Soho?