A Hotel House-Hunting Adventure in Central London

Photo by Maxim Melnikov on Unsplash

It should be no surprise to anyone that London has literally hundreds of hotels throughout the city, ranging from the barely habitable to the ultra-luxurious like The Savoy, The Ritz, and Claridge’s. Whatever your hotel budget happens to be when travelling to London or any other major world city, it’s certainly possible to find suitable accommodation whenever you travel to meet your basic needs, plus whatever amenities to make your stay as comfortable as possible within reason. Whether you’re a tourist or a regular business traveller to London, it’s necessary to find hotels within your price range to make your trips financially viable and personally enjoyable.

As someone who’s travelled regularly to London for over twenty years as a theoretical physicist to attend conferences and conduct any academic business in Europe, I have finally come to recognize the need to find a dependable and more permanent “home away from home” whenever I visit the city, instead of constantly investigating the range of options available that take time away from getting other things done. Certain key factors like location with ease of access to major airports and the London Underground, along with access to reliable high-speed internet in my hotel of choice that go beyond whatever the cost per night happens to be as a consideration for where I need to stay.

When I finally resumed travel to London following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, I learned the hard way why I can no longer consider staying in hotels located outside of central London, even if the cost per night is very attractive. Back in November 2022, I had appointments with academic colleagues in Cambridge and Oxfordshire that required me to make day-trips with the trains. Because my budget hotel at the time was near Wembley Stadium, which requires roughly an extra half-hour of travel time to reach central London that I didn’t correctly anticipate, I ended up running late for both appointments. This is something I promised myself to never let happen again, and so for any future trips to London I recognize the necessity to only stay in a central location with easy access to the train stations, restaurants, and other logistical considerations to minimize my ground travel time and maximize my overall productivity.