Planning a longed-for getaway? Why not pamper yourself with a five-star break at three-star prices...
Britain’s Most Luxurious Hotels Sunday 8.00pm C4
ED GRENBY - 29 May 2021
Holiday shows can be fantasies, enticing us to dream of going places we simply can’t afford.
And new Channel 4 series Britain’s Most Luxurious Hotels certainly shows us a world where the guests are wonderfully pampered – at a price. The show takes us behind the silver-service scenes at three of the UK’s classiest joints – from the funky five-star treehouses of Chewton Glen on the edge of the New Forest (chewtonglen.com) to the decorous 1865 elegance of the Langham in London’s Regent Street, where afternoon tea will set you back £62 a head (langhamhotels.com). But though these hotels are favoured by the likes of Chris Evans, Amanda Holden and Ronan Keating – all of whom crop up in the series – you don’t need an A-lister’s allowance to stay at some of Britain’s top-end properties. With the following tips, in fact, you could be holidaying at any of the world’s five-star hotels – and paying strictly three-star prices.
GO AGAINST THE FLOW
Nipping off on a weekend city break? Then look for a luxury hotel in your destination’s business district. From Monday to Friday they attract corporate travellers, but come the weekend they’re empty – which means bargain roomrates for you. At London’s smart Threadneedles Hotel, in the heart of the City between St Paul’s and the Tower of London, we found rooms for £288 a night at the weekend – compared with £416 in the week (hotelthreadneedles.co.uk). It works the other way round for leisure hotels, of course: most people want to stay there at the weekend, so you’ll find midweek rates are much lower. When we checked, the grand Gidleigh Park in Devon (gidleigh.co.uk) had rooms for £317 on a Tuesday night but £422 the following Saturday.
SEARCH SMART
A bit of online legwork can save you a lot of money. Sadly, there’s no simple rule for which accommodation website digs up the cheapest deals, so try a combination of comparison sites: trivago.co.uk, booking.com and expedia.co.uk are a good start. Booking for this summer, we found a room at the predictably glitzy, five-star Trump International Las Vegas (trump hotels.com/las-vegas) for £130 a night on Expedia, but the same one for just £66 a night via Trivago. Once you’ve found the best deal, don’t book it...
PICK UP THE PHONE
Armed with an online rate, call the hotel direct and simply ask if they can beat the price you found. Hotels have to pay a commission to those “aggregate sites” mentioned above, so they much prefer you to book direct. That means they will happily match – and often beat – a price you’ve unearthed elsewhere. Whatever they offer, though, ask for more: haggling doesn’t come naturally to us Brits, but it’s the key to getting more than you’ve paid for. You may be offered free meals, spa treatments, champagne or a room upgrade. At timelessly lovely Bailiffscourt hotel in West Sussex (hshotels.co.uk), we were offered a room worth £200 a night more than the one we paid for – simply for suggesting casually we’d book through momondo.co.uk instead of direct.
PLAY DETECTIVE
Luxury hotel managers hate having empty rooms: it means they’re stuck with exactly the same high staff costs as if the room were filled, but with no money coming in. So they’d rather get even half the full rate than nothing – but they don’t want to be seen to be selling off rooms cheaply otherwise no one will ever pay full price again. Their solution is to sell off unused rooms through websites such as laterooms.com, lastminute.com or priceline.com, often “anonymously” – so you know the approximate area and star-rating of the hotel you’re booking, but not its name until after you’ve paid. You can get excellent deals this way: we got a room at London’s grandly gothic Landmark hotel (landmarklondon.co.uk) for £250 booked 48 hours in advance through lastminute.com; the “last-minute offer” on the hotel’s own website was £475. It’s also often pretty easy to work out the “secret” hotel you’re being offered, too. Simply copy the description and paste it into Google: you’ll usually find amateur sleuths have done the detective work for you and posted the results.
KEEP LOOKING
Most hotels now run their pricing strategy the same way as airlines – increasing or decreasing their rates according to demand. So to make sure you get the best deal, book as far in advance as you can: there are often “early-bird discounts” for those booking three to six months out. But then keep checking prices! Most of the big websites – and, these days, pretty much every travel company – offer free cancellations right up until 48 hours before the start of your stay. That means that if the rate at your hotel does drop below what you paid, you can simply cancel your existing reservation and rebook at the lower price. We reduced the cost of a room at the Park Hyatt Tokyo (hyatt.com) – that’s the sleek, sophisticated and rather glamorous hotel where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson met in the film Lost in Translation – from £369 to £206 with a last-minute rate at booking.com. Suite dreams!
Holiday shows can be fantasies, enticing us to dream of going places we simply can’t afford.
And new Channel 4 series Britain’s Most Luxurious Hotels certainly shows us a world where the guests are wonderfully pampered – at a price. The show takes us behind the silver-service scenes at three of the UK’s classiest joints – from the funky five-star treehouses of Chewton Glen on the edge of the New Forest (chewtonglen.com) to the decorous 1865 elegance of the Langham in London’s Regent Street, where afternoon tea will set you back £62 a head (langhamhotels.com). But though these hotels are favoured by the likes of Chris Evans, Amanda Holden and Ronan Keating – all of whom crop up in the series – you don’t need an A-lister’s allowance to stay at some of Britain’s top-end properties. With the following tips, in fact, you could be holidaying at any of the world’s five-star hotels – and paying strictly three-star prices.
GO AGAINST THE FLOW
Nipping off on a weekend city break? Then look for a luxury hotel in your destination’s business district. From Monday to Friday they attract corporate travellers, but come the weekend they’re empty – which means bargain roomrates for you. At London’s smart Threadneedles Hotel, in the heart of the City between St Paul’s and the Tower of London, we found rooms for £288 a night at the weekend – compared with £416 in the week (hotelthreadneedles.co.uk). It works the other way round for leisure hotels, of course: most people want to stay there at the weekend, so you’ll find midweek rates are much lower. When we checked, the grand Gidleigh Park in Devon (gidleigh.co.uk) had rooms for £317 on a Tuesday night but £422 the following Saturday.
SEARCH SMART
A bit of online legwork can save you a lot of money. Sadly, there’s no simple rule for which accommodation website digs up the cheapest deals, so try a combination of comparison sites: trivago.co.uk, booking.com and expedia.co.uk are a good start. Booking for this summer, we found a room at the predictably glitzy, five-star Trump International Las Vegas (trump hotels.com/las-vegas) for £130 a night on Expedia, but the same one for just £66 a night via Trivago. Once you’ve found the best deal, don’t book it...
PICK UP THE PHONE
Armed with an online rate, call the hotel direct and simply ask if they can beat the price you found. Hotels have to pay a commission to those “aggregate sites” mentioned above, so they much prefer you to book direct. That means they will happily match – and often beat – a price you’ve unearthed elsewhere. Whatever they offer, though, ask for more: haggling doesn’t come naturally to us Brits, but it’s the key to getting more than you’ve paid for. You may be offered free meals, spa treatments, champagne or a room upgrade. At timelessly lovely Bailiffscourt hotel in West Sussex (hshotels.co.uk), we were offered a room worth £200 a night more than the one we paid for – simply for suggesting casually we’d book through momondo.co.uk instead of direct.
PLAY DETECTIVE
Luxury hotel managers hate having empty rooms: it means they’re stuck with exactly the same high staff costs as if the room were filled, but with no money coming in. So they’d rather get even half the full rate than nothing – but they don’t want to be seen to be selling off rooms cheaply otherwise no one will ever pay full price again. Their solution is to sell off unused rooms through websites such as laterooms.com, lastminute.com or priceline.com, often “anonymously” – so you know the approximate area and star-rating of the hotel you’re booking, but not its name until after you’ve paid. You can get excellent deals this way: we got a room at London’s grandly gothic Landmark hotel (landmarklondon.co.uk) for £250 booked 48 hours in advance through lastminute.com; the “last-minute offer” on the hotel’s own website was £475. It’s also often pretty easy to work out the “secret” hotel you’re being offered, too. Simply copy the description and paste it into Google: you’ll usually find amateur sleuths have done the detective work for you and posted the results.
KEEP LOOKING
Most hotels now run their pricing strategy the same way as airlines – increasing or decreasing their rates according to demand. So to make sure you get the best deal, book as far in advance as you can: there are often “early-bird discounts” for those booking three to six months out. But then keep checking prices! Most of the big websites – and, these days, pretty much every travel company – offer free cancellations right up until 48 hours before the start of your stay. That means that if the rate at your hotel does drop below what you paid, you can simply cancel your existing reservation and rebook at the lower price. We reduced the cost of a room at the Park Hyatt Tokyo (hyatt.com) – that’s the sleek, sophisticated and rather glamorous hotel where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson met in the film Lost in Translation – from £369 to £206 with a last-minute rate at booking.com. Suite dreams!
ED GRENBY