The best five-star hotels in London
An insider's guide to the top five-star hotels in London, including the best for Michelin-starred restaurants, seductive spas, impressive service and lavish bedrooms.
Haymarket Hotel
Trafalgar Square, London, England
8Telegraph expert rating
This zingy boutique hotel occupies a fine Regency building on Haymarket. Like all of Kit Kemp’s Firmdale Hotels, the Haymarket is glamorous and funky, with the emphasis on colour and individual art pieces. It has bold rooms, assiduous staff, and easy access to the National Gallery. The Brumus restaurant is great for pre- or post-theatre goers. Read expert review From £360 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
Corinthia Hotel London
Charing Cross, London, England
8Telegraph expert rating
Shamelessly opulent. This is a hotel that wants to impress – and it succeeds. Get ready for fabulous chandeliers, intriguing modern art, palatial public rooms, a Daniel Galvin hair salon, a mini-branch of Harrods — oh, and there's also a magnificent four-floor spa with ESPA treatments and dazzlingly indulgent relaxation areas. The staff are clearly motivated by working in a hotel that buzzes. Read expert review From £621 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Claridge's
Mayfair, London, England
9Telegraph expert rating
This is a hotel with impeccable pedigree that has long been a favourite stop for aristocrats, statesmen, film stars and supermodels. Matched to this A-list clientele is a superlative party spirit — every year guests at Claridge's guzzle some 36,000 bottles of champagne. Much of this success results from an Art Deco makeover in the late 1920s that set the stage for fun, and the hotel has continued to attract and work with the top designers and artists of the day. Read expert review From £540 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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The Ritz London
Mayfair, London, England
9Telegraph expert rating
César Ritz’s legacy has changed little since it opened in 1909. The Long Gallery and Palm Court are ravishing; the dining room is one of the loveliest in Europe. But there’s more. There’s the staff, and their uniforms. From the doormen with their white gloves tucked into their epaulettes and the pair of bellhops who open the double doors to each arriving guest to the frock-coated flunkies, the white-coated barmen and the chambermaids in their pinnies and caps, I found them faultless. Read expert review From £592 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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The Stafford London
Mayfair, London, England
9Telegraph expert rating
The hotel has been a favourite of Americans since World War II when the American Bar was a gathering place for US airmen. The hotel is calm, comfortable and elegant. Its two best-known features are the 350-year-old Wine Cellars housing around 8,000 bottles alongside memorabilia from its time as a bomb shelter during the war, and the aforementioned bar, festooned with baseball caps, nick-nacks, signed celebrity photographs and other mementoes given by departing guests. Read expert review From £353 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Hotel 41
Victoria, London, England
8Telegraph expert rating
The raison d’être of the hotel is, first and foremost, to please the customer. It all begins with the guest preference form, sent in advance. Once there, a lift from 41’s striking black-and-white lobby on Buckingham Palace Road whisks you straight up to its striking black-and-white bedrooms. Front-facing windows look down into the Royal Mews opposite — heaven for American guests. Read expert review From £377 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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The Goring
Belgravia, London, England
9Telegraph expert rating
A favourite of dowager duchesses, lords, ladies and assorted gentlefolk; the Middleton family and the Duchess of Cambridge stayed here the night before the Royal Wedding. To mark its 100th anniversary, it began a programme of stylish redecoration that finished with the unveiling of its ravishing new Front Hall, clad with hand-painted wallpaper of exotic animals (some caricatures of staff and owners) in a romantic English landscape. The Bar & Lounge, by Tim Gosling, is richly decorated in reds, yellows and gold, and the Dining Room, by David Linley, is notable for its love-them-or-loathe-them Swarovski ‘blossom’ chandeliers. Read expert review From £387 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Rosewood London
Holborn, London, England
9Telegraph expert rating
This hotel occupies the former headquarters, until the mid-1990s, of Pearl Assurance. The purpose-built flamboyant Belle Epoque Edwardian building has rare and lovely marble panels and pillars, Cuban mahogany and French walnut fittings. But its most remarkable feature is a solid Pavonazzo marble staircase that soars to a dizzying 166-foot high cupola. Scarfes Bar has become a popular meeting place for Londoners. Read expert review From £476 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
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Covent Garden Hotel
Covent Garden, London, England
8Telegraph expert rating
A 'quirky modern take on traditional English style' is how the owners Tim and Kit Kemp describe the hotel, and this is reflected in rooms such as the striking Drawing Room with its wood-panelled walls, fireplace, bright furnishings and oil paintings — perfect for a post-work drink. Next door there’s the small and more intimate Library — drinks for both come from the well-stocked honesty bar. Easygoing and unostentatious service is one of the features of the hotel, and the friendly atmosphere extends to the welcome gift in each room which might be a set of pencils, chocolates or a scented candle. Read expert review From £354 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
The London EDITION
Soho, London, England
8Telegraph expert rating
Celebrity hotelier Ian Schrager is noted for design-lead, service-light establishments, but here, with the help of Marriott, a more grounded feel has been achieved. The multi-functional lobby makes a great entrance, though it’s the restored stucco ceiling, old not new, that really grabs the attention. The picture-lined restaurant is an equally successful space and there’s also an intimate bar serving a daily punch. Read expert review From £308 per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
London Edition, Fitzrovia
Celebrity hotelier Ian Schrager is noted for design lead, service light establishments, but here, with the help of Marriott, a more grounded feel has been achieved. The multi-functional lobby makes a great entrance, though it’s the restored stucco ceiling, old not new, that really grabs the attention.
The picture-lined restaurant is an equally successful space and there’s also an intimate bar serving a daily punch and Basement nightclub, mercifully soundproofed. The media and the fashion crowd predominate here, but no one will feel out of place, especially in Jason Atherton’s democratic restaurant.
Read the full review: London Edition, Fitzrovia
The Stafford, Mayfair
The hotel has been a favourite of Americans since World War II when the American Bar was a gathering place for US airmen. The hotel is calm, comfortable and elegant. Its two best-known features are the 350-year-old Wine Cellars housing around 8,000 bottles alongside memorabilia from its time as a bomb shelter during the war, and the intimate American Bar, festooned with baseball caps, nick-nacks, signed celebrity photographs and other mementoes given by departing guests. One corner is devoted to Nancy Wake, a highly decorated and fearless SOE officer who moved into the hotel in her late eighties and held court, gin and tonic in hand.
Read the full review: The Stafford, Mayfair
Haymarket, Strand
Like all Kit Kemp’s Firmdale Hotels, the Haymarket is glamorous and funky, with the emphasis on colour and individual art pieces. But though it packs a punch in terms of style, it’s perhaps less successful compared to the others as a place to come home to after a weary day’s shopping, since it looks and feels, with a huge lobby and a series of expansive but under populated spaces for eating and relaxing, more like a stage set for an upmarket hotel than the real thing.
Read the full review: Haymarket, Strand
Hotel 41, Victoria
A lift from 41’s striking black and white lobby on Buckingham Palace Road whisks you straight up to its striking black and white bedrooms. Front facing windows look down into the Royal Mews opposite – heaven for American guests.
It all begins with the guest preference form, sent in advance, which made me start wildly ticking boxes, just for the hell of it. ‘Which of the following may we place in your room?’ An exercise bike? Why not. Humidifier? Of course. Not forgetting the yoga mat, neck support pillow and bed board. Why not go the whole hog and inform the management of your ‘hobbies/interests’ and your favourite colours? Black suited staff hover, ever solicitous, with red carnations in their buttonholes.
Yes I did have a good journey, thank all of you who have asked me.
Read the full review: Hotel 41, Victoria
The Goring, Belgravia
Style was never the Goring’s strong point, though it always had character and humour (self-mocking caricatures; Noel Coward singing if you are put on hold; life-sized sheep in bedrooms and plastic ducks in bathrooms; a house magazine called The Trumpeter that’s full of fun).
Key staff are long serving, notably the larger-than-life David Morgan-Hewitt, managing director. The delightful Michael Beavan acts as ‘host’ (“my job description is very simple; I don’t have one. My only task is to loiter in the lobby and find out what we can do to make guests feel more at home”) and sets the tone for warm, but always polite, service.
Read the full review: The Goring, Belgravia