There’s plenty of showmanship here, but it’s more Noël Coward than PT Barnum: vintage chandeliers, brass and crimson, mohair and damask, mural painters from the opera house involved in the decor. The centerpiece restaurant, in a luminous, almost neoclassical atrium draped with greenery, was booked up for weeks, a see-and-be-seen destination. It came with some expectation-after all, the original put a whole New York City neighborhood on the map, its Dirty Martini-fueled bar an overnight sensation – but has hit the ground running. And earlier this year, the first NoMad outside the States opened in a palatial former magistrates’ court opposite the Royal Opera House. If you purchase something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.ĭespite the Ace Hotel’s departure from the city, there’s something of a USA revival going on in London, with The Standard landing in King’s Cross and the Mondrian just launched in Shoreditch. To help you narrow down your search, we also have the following recommendations:Īll listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. To be closer to London’s creative, music and nightlife hub, head to East London, where there are a number of smart hotels in Shoreditch. For a stay that sits alongside greenery, some of London’s smartest high-end hotels neighbor Hyde Park or Green Park, with grand landmarks like Buckingham Palace and Harrods located nearby. If it’s your first time to the capital or you’re looking to stay among the action, most of the best hotels in London tend to surround the West End in areas such as Soho, Piccadilly, Mayfair, and Covent Garden. If you do not, you may take comfort in the fact that there are at least 123,000 alternatives available to you during your time in London. We hope you will agree that our idea of what is best is generally on the money. While it is true that certain other great cities of the world are, in hotel terms, similarly blessed- Paris and New York, undoubtedly Hong Kong and Rome, possibly-none is more so than London.Īs for the word ‘best’ in our headline, with its hint of know-it-all certainty, well, provoking a bit of civilized debate is part of the point of lists like these. Still, a shortlist of 36 hotels in London is plenty to be getting on with, especially 36 that are as diverse, exciting, innovative, sumptuous, original, and surprising as these. A decade later, that number has no doubt increased considerably.

In any case, 123,000 was the figure that some diligent scholar of the hospitality sector came up with back in 2010. You would think that, as with schools or hospitals or public swimming pools, there would exist a definitive and up-to-date list of the city’s hotels. There are approximately 123,000 hotel rooms in London.

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