Umm. Can you believe these reviews
From Part 1 you read how it would be a good idea to increase your room budget for London hotels and to choose a hotel near a station.
In this part you’ll see how to get the best out of Tripadvisor and how thinking out of the box can get you a nice room.
So let’s start and the first thing to remember is:
Hotel reviews are not always honest – Tripadvisor is the largest and most used hotel review site. However over the last few months questions have been asked about its impartiality see http://bit.ly/wWzuS and http://bit.ly/6km1V.
Here’s the way I now do it.
I’ve been using Tripadvisor long before hotels and PR firms woke up to the idea of Tripadvisor. Back in 2006 and earlier the reviews and ratings were a lot more honest than they are now.
For me, anything a reviewer from say 2007 onwards says has to be treated with a huge pinch of salt. The reviewers I believe the most are the ones from people who have been members of Tripadvisor from 2006 and earlier.
My advice is when you’re looking at the reviews first look at when the person became a member, then look at the review.
Let’s face it if you owned a hotel with not very good ratings and a PR firm said they could get you better ratings, what would you do.
Think out of the box – It’s obvious that most of the hotels in London cater for tourists, which is why the quality of service and standards vary so wildly even within the same hotel rating.
You see these hotels know there’s a constant flow of visitors to London so they don’t have to try that hard to keep you happy.
However for hotels that mainly cater to business people it’s a different story. Business people expect a certain level of service and if they don’t get it they won’t be back and neither will anyone from their company.
This means that these types of hotels have very high standards and are usually near good transportation links. They won’t be the cheapest during the week but their rates drop considerably over the weekend which when you put it together can make them good value.
Personally, if I didn’t live in London and was looking for somewhere to stay for a few days, I’d look at what the business hotel sector had to offer.
So there you have it, four simple steps to help you in your research to find a nice hotel in London.
To recap.
- Add half as much again to your room budget.
- Choose a hotel near the underground/train station that you will be arriving at.
- Look at older hotel reviews for an honest review.
- Consider business hotels as an alternative to tourist hotels.
Hope you found all of this useful and feel free to leave a comment if it will help others who read this post. Good karma to all of you who do.
Also if you get the EPok London Pack we have tips like this plus we give you 2 for 1 offers and discounts on eating out. For more details visit epok.com or if you would like a vacation rentals guide click London vacation rentals guide.
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