Where to stay: city guides
Choose a city, then the part of town you want to step into each morning. In London, that might be the theatres around Piccadilly Circus or the river at Bankside, and both have hotels a short walk away.
United Kingdom
- London21 hotelsSofitel London St James
Should I choose the neighbourhood or the hotel first?
Choose the neighbourhood first, because two hotels of the same brand can serve very different trips. In London, Sofitel London St James is 3.1 km in a straight line from Bank, in the City, while Sofitel London Heathrow is 28.3 km from it, joined to Terminal 5 instead. Both carry the Sofitel name and Accor's Luxury segment, and only one of them lets you walk to a theatre.
Each city page groups its hotels by area, so you can settle on a part of town before you compare. The London page covers 18 neighbourhoods, from St James's and Covent Garden in the West End to Bankside, across the river from the City, then the City itself, Canary Wharf, Stratford and Harlington, beside Heathrow. Once the area is settled, the city's overall list and its comparison table bring the choice down to the hotels inside it, with their spa, pool and nearest station in one row.
How do I judge how far a hotel is from what I want to see?
Trust the walking times a hotel publishes to its own station, and treat other distances as estimates. Sofitel London St James gives Piccadilly Circus as a five-minute walk, St Martins Lane London gives Leicester Square as two minutes, and Pullman London St Pancras gives King's Cross St Pancras as one. Those are the figures our pages repeat, with the hotel as the source.
Where a hotel publishes no time, our pages give a distance in a straight line and label it that way, such as 0.27 km from Raffles London at The OWO to Embankment station. A straight line is always shorter than the walk, so allow for crossings, stairs and the station entrance. Official pages also disagree at times: Accor's pages put Novotel London Tower Bridge both three and nine minutes from Tower Bridge. When a few minutes decide your booking, plan the route on a map from the hotel's address.
When is a hotel outside the centre the better choice?
An address outside the centre makes sense when the trip is built around one place far from the West End. For a dawn flight, ibis London Heathrow Airport, in Harlington, has its first Hotel Hoppa departures at 04:25 and 04:37, and Sofitel London Heathrow keeps its spa open until 21:00 for the evening before. For an event at ExCeL London, Novotel London Excel stands on Royal Victoria Dock, 320 m from Custom House station on the Elizabeth line and the DLR.
For a family week, Aparthotel Adagio London Stratford has an indoor playground, a children's library and board games, next to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Westfield Stratford City, with a kitchen in every apartment. Stratford station, 400 m away, carries the Central, Jubilee and Elizabeth lines, so the centre stays within reach. Each of these addresses adds a train ride to every day in town: from Terminal 5, the Heathrow Express alone takes 21 minutes to Paddington.
Frequently asked questions
Which neighbourhood should I book on a first visit to London?
Start in the West End, where five hotels in Best hotels in London stand within a short walk of the theatres and parks. Sofitel London St James is 300 m from Piccadilly Circus; The Savoy, A Fairmont Hotel four minutes from Charing Cross; St Martins Lane London two minutes from Leicester Square; and Sanderson London three minutes from Oxford Circus. Raffles London at The OWO is on Whitehall.
Which Accor hotels in London are closest to a Tube station?
ibis London City - Shoreditch is the closest in Best hotels in London, 100 m from Aldgate East, a one-minute walk. The Hoxton Southwark is one minute from Southwark station, ibis London Blackfriars 140 m from it, and Pullman London St Pancras is 200 m from King's Cross St Pancras, as Novotel London Tower Bridge is from Tower Hill.
Which part of London has the most Accor hotels?
Bankside, with four hotels in Best hotels in London, from Lifestyle to Economy: The Hoxton Southwark, Novotel London Blackfriars, Mercure London Bankside and ibis London Blackfriars. The Hoxton and the ibis are one and two minutes from Southwark station, Novotel London Blackfriars is 800 m from Blackfriars, and Mercure London Bankside is 250 m from Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe.
Does a city page cover every Accor hotel in the city?
No, a city page covers the Accor hotels in our list for that city, and Accor's own city page often shows more. Best hotels in London holds 21 hotels, from St James's to Harlington, while Accor's London page also lists Mercure hotels in Hyde Park, Paddington and Earls Court that are not in it. Accor's city page shows the full choice.