Your London accommodations will be your home away from home.
Here’s a nice neighborhood map borrowed from visitlondon.com.
Most tourist sites are within the Paddington, South Kensington, Covent Garden, The City and Camden Town areas.
Note: different booking sites use different neighborhood boundaries.
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Three Questions Before Choosing Your London Accommodations
1) Is there a part of town you know you’d like to stay?
Will you be going to the theater in the evenings? Is there an event you are traveling to attend? Do you long for a view of, say, St Paul’s Cathedral from your room?
To see what’s available, I use Google Maps.
Use Incognito or Privacy Mode on your device when you research hotels!
Google kindly populates the area with accommodations and estimated prices.
Be sure to enter the dates you’ll be in London because prices can vary greatly based on time of the year and how far out you’re shopping.
Yowza! Using the same approximate crop as the Visit London map above, these are some of the accommodations available in early summer.
Let’s narrow it down further.
What’s available near Buckingham Palace?
Still, yowza.
As you can see, the King lives in a crowded neighborhood.
Zoom in further to better see what’s available in the area you plan to stay.
2) How complicated will it be to get there once you arrive in London?
Is there a shuttle? Probably not.
How expensive is it to hire a taxi from the airport or train station?
Is there a tube station nearby? Underground stations are marked on Google Maps.
The stop at Victoria Station, south of Buckingham Place, is shown toward the bottom of this map. It’s the red circle dissected by a blue stripe. St James’s Station is also on this map toward the right hand margin.
Staying near an Underground Station can ease getting around the city.
3) What can you afford to spend on your London accommodations?
Is there a limit to what you are willing to pay for a room, suite or apartment?
If you answered yes, do you have a set amount?
You can adjust your nightly rate on Google Maps so you don’t see accommodations out of your price range.
Finding no good options within the initial area you chose? Looking further afield may lead you to a neighborhood better suited to your needs.
Finding the Best Price for your London Accommodations
As you click around the Google map, you’ll see details on the different properties like photos, contact information and reviews.
Additionally, you will be shown the price offered on a variety of websites; like the property’s site plus big and small travel deal search engines.
One app that I have never seen included in the price comparisons is Hopper. Yet, I’ve used it a number of time with better results than what I found on Google’s go-to’s like Booking.com and Priceline.
One more thing
There is an area not shown on the Visit London map that might interest Texans touring LONDON. Heathrow Airport. It is southwest of London.
I mention it because, if you have a late arrival or an early departure, you may want to book a night near the airport.
To Recap
Accommodations in London are plentiful and varied.
Which can make shopping for your home away from home daunting, but not impossible.
First narrow down the area you’d like to stay. Find it on Google Maps. From there locate the Underground station and see what is close (if you plan to use public transportation). Then price shop using the information Google provides or by checking on deal finding apps like Hopper.
Happy trails, y’all!
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