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Is it really so hard to get a reasonably-priced hotel in London?

Is it really so hard to get a reasonably-priced hotel in London?

While the common perception is that London hotels are pricey, is this really true?

"Expensive" is a difficult idea to pin down. Sometimes you can spend a lot and think it was great, while other times even "cheap" can be poor value. It's tough to find real value!

What then does the hard data say? London apparently has the 5th most expensive hotels in the world, after Moscow, New York, Dubai and Venice (source: Hotels.com survey).

Another survey by Hogg Robinson showed London hotel prices in 10th place (not as dear as New York, Mumbai and Stockholm among others).

Why is London relatively expensive? It appears that plenty of tourists and businesspeople want to visit the city. This of course unfortunately means that prices stay firm.

The good news is that there is great value in London and London hotels IF you know where to look. The key is to search independent blogs (like the one linked at the bottom) and NOT rely on hotel or booking websites which are only interested in selling you a room.

Ready for more good news? A separate survey (from the Economist) looked at the most expensive cities for all spending (beyond just hotel prices): this discovered that Paris and Copenhagen for example are a lot more expensive than London.

So while London hotels and London may seem expensive to tourists, this must be seen in the context of other leading city destinations.

The most important advice is to always book your hotel in London after searching out the best price on the internet. If you book based on just one website's pricing, you will almost always be missing out on the best rate.

Also, please don't be fooled by "best online rate guarantees". In practice these are covered by lots of legalese and you have very little recourse if you end up paying over the odds.

This article's writer is a London hotel market "insider" who personally meets hoteliers and regularly compares online hotel rates for London. There is no doubt that there is wide variation between London hotel rates between different websites so you can easily lose money.

The solution is to use a one-click "price comparison" tool to search lots of different websites at the same time. This allows you to make sure that you are getting the best possible hotel rate in London at any given time. It now takes no longer to search 30+websites with one click than it does to search one website!

For example, the blog on London hotels linked below searches 30+ online booking websites to identify the best London hotel rate within a matter of seconds.

Everyone should use a hotel meta-search engine to get the best London hotel rate. By spending as little as possible on the hotel, it really frees up your budget to enjoy London to the max!

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