The most festive hotel to stay in London at Christmas
Feeling festive but looking for luxury? London’s Dorchester Hotel will transport you to your own private Narnia
Ed Grenby - 18 November 2025
Image credit: Dorchester Collection
Unless you fancy a minibreak in Bethlehem (stables from around £200 per night in December, I’d imagine), arguably the most festive stay in the world is at one of London’s timelessly plush old hotels. Crackling fires, dazzlingly decorated trees, armchairs you could hide in – and the grandes dames of the capital’s sleepover scene feel like they’ve got one foot in Christmas Past (in the very best way).
You can explore their histories, in fact, with Great Hotels through Time, a four-part series currently available on 5 streaming – in which The Savoy, The Ritz, Claridge’s and The Dorchester open their archives to the cameras. The stories are amazing – Claridge’s alone has hosted everyone from Queen Victoria to Scarlett Johansson – but even better is the way you can still feel the heritage in every perfectly French-polished hallway yourself. And all for the price of a cocktail, since the hotels’ bars and restaurants also serve non-residents.
Each hotel puts on a bit of extra sparkle for Christmas, but it’s fair to say The Dorchester in Park Lane (dorchestercollection.com/london/the-dorchester) is the festive epicentre. Only a few steps from Hyde Park and its Winter Wonderland extravaganza (hydeparkwinterwonderland.com), it’s also close to Oxford Street’s ‘Sky Full of Stars’ Christmas lights and Leicester Square’s new seasonal ice rink (skateleicestersquare.co.uk).
The hotel already has its 15-foot Nordmann spruce up and decorated, as well as a gingerbread ‘house’ that renders the whole of London’s skyline in sweet-scented edible form; and its programme of charity events includes a concert featuring Mica Paris, as well as a children’s tea and a reading from David Walliams – alongside visits from the big man in red.
Even outside Yuletide, the place positively chortles with bonhomie. When I last visited, in autumn, I felt like I’d found a little pocket of permafest, a reverse Narnia where it’s always almost Christmas but never winter: with a rib-sticking beef wellington in The Grill restaurant and a rum-marzipan-sherry and-fermented-apple cocktail in the Vesper Bar, I was fast-forwarded to festive mode even as leaves fell golden in the bright sunshine outside.
In fact, even as I approached the building, I felt transported. Top-hatted doormen ushered me into a lobby of Italian marble and gold leaf where butlers and other staff bustle discreetly in a ballet of graceful efficiency. Who needs The Nutcracker? Oh, you do? Well it’s on at the London Coliseum this year (londoncoliseum.org).
This isn’t a hotel that tries to reinvent itself every five minutes, because it doesn’t need to. The rooms and suites have recently been refurbished, and The Grill has just turned up the heat with a new menu and head chef, but there would be little to alarm former guests Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra or Prince Philip (who held his stag night there before marrying the then Princess Elizabeth in 1947).
The hotel’s heart remains the Promenade – a long, elegantly languorous drawing room, all creamy Art Deco curves, where afternoon tea is taken while pianists tinkle. Off here are such ‘essentials’ as a high-end florist and three-Michelin-star Alain Ducasse restaurant, as well as the decorous Vesper Bar, which is named after James Bond’s signature martini, invented by lifetime Dorchester regular Ian Fleming.
Image credit: Dorchester Collection - Above: banish winter blues in the Vesper Bar, named after James Bond’s signature martini Far left: the Dorchester’s entrance where smiling doormen will usher you into the lap of luxury
If you must step beyond the hotel’s beautiful bubble, you’ll find its Mayfair milieu even shinier than usual at this time of year. A short stroll down to Bond Street takes you past window displays that could double as art installations – Cartier wrapped in its signature red ribbon, Tiffany’s a frosty dreamscape of silver and blue – and, nearby, Fortnum & Mason glowing like a Christmas bauble (pop in for a tin of tea you don’t need and a mince pie you absolutely do). Immediately behind the hotel, in South Audley Street, is the Grosvenor Chapel, where Keira Knightley married Chiwetel Ejiofor in Love Actually, and there are weekly choral and organ concerts.
Stamping back into The Dorchester on a chilly December evening is the best bit of all. Garlands drape the marble balconies; a forest of fir trees scent the air and the resident pianist conjures up a few (classy) carols. It’s like Dickens, but with better canapés.
Upstairs, meanwhile, lift doors glide open onto deep corridor carpets that hush your footsteps like two inches of snow, while your room is as cosy as Christmas itself – characterful as only a building this old can be, but with baths, beds and furniture so comfy it’s like sinking into a cloud. Wake up here and every morning feels as exciting as 25 December.
Great Hotels Through Time available on 5 streaming
Image credit: Dorchester Collection
Unless you fancy a minibreak in Bethlehem (stables from around £200 per night in December, I’d imagine), arguably the most festive stay in the world is at one of London’s timelessly plush old hotels. Crackling fires, dazzlingly decorated trees, armchairs you could hide in – and the grandes dames of the capital’s sleepover scene feel like they’ve got one foot in Christmas Past (in the very best way).
You can explore their histories, in fact, with Great Hotels through Time, a four-part series currently available on 5 streaming – in which The Savoy, The Ritz, Claridge’s and The Dorchester open their archives to the cameras. The stories are amazing – Claridge’s alone has hosted everyone from Queen Victoria to Scarlett Johansson – but even better is the way you can still feel the heritage in every perfectly French-polished hallway yourself. And all for the price of a cocktail, since the hotels’ bars and restaurants also serve non-residents.
Each hotel puts on a bit of extra sparkle for Christmas, but it’s fair to say The Dorchester in Park Lane (dorchestercollection.com/london/the-dorchester) is the festive epicentre. Only a few steps from Hyde Park and its Winter Wonderland extravaganza (hydeparkwinterwonderland.com), it’s also close to Oxford Street’s ‘Sky Full of Stars’ Christmas lights and Leicester Square’s new seasonal ice rink (skateleicestersquare.co.uk).
The hotel already has its 15-foot Nordmann spruce up and decorated, as well as a gingerbread ‘house’ that renders the whole of London’s skyline in sweet-scented edible form; and its programme of charity events includes a concert featuring Mica Paris, as well as a children’s tea and a reading from David Walliams – alongside visits from the big man in red.
Even outside Yuletide, the place positively chortles with bonhomie. When I last visited, in autumn, I felt like I’d found a little pocket of permafest, a reverse Narnia where it’s always almost Christmas but never winter: with a rib-sticking beef wellington in The Grill restaurant and a rum-marzipan-sherry and-fermented-apple cocktail in the Vesper Bar, I was fast-forwarded to festive mode even as leaves fell golden in the bright sunshine outside.
In fact, even as I approached the building, I felt transported. Top-hatted doormen ushered me into a lobby of Italian marble and gold leaf where butlers and other staff bustle discreetly in a ballet of graceful efficiency. Who needs The Nutcracker? Oh, you do? Well it’s on at the London Coliseum this year (londoncoliseum.org).
This isn’t a hotel that tries to reinvent itself every five minutes, because it doesn’t need to. The rooms and suites have recently been refurbished, and The Grill has just turned up the heat with a new menu and head chef, but there would be little to alarm former guests Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra or Prince Philip (who held his stag night there before marrying the then Princess Elizabeth in 1947).
The hotel’s heart remains the Promenade – a long, elegantly languorous drawing room, all creamy Art Deco curves, where afternoon tea is taken while pianists tinkle. Off here are such ‘essentials’ as a high-end florist and three-Michelin-star Alain Ducasse restaurant, as well as the decorous Vesper Bar, which is named after James Bond’s signature martini, invented by lifetime Dorchester regular Ian Fleming.
Image credit: Dorchester Collection - Above: banish winter blues in the Vesper Bar, named after James Bond’s signature martini Far left: the Dorchester’s entrance where smiling doormen will usher you into the lap of luxury
If you must step beyond the hotel’s beautiful bubble, you’ll find its Mayfair milieu even shinier than usual at this time of year. A short stroll down to Bond Street takes you past window displays that could double as art installations – Cartier wrapped in its signature red ribbon, Tiffany’s a frosty dreamscape of silver and blue – and, nearby, Fortnum & Mason glowing like a Christmas bauble (pop in for a tin of tea you don’t need and a mince pie you absolutely do). Immediately behind the hotel, in South Audley Street, is the Grosvenor Chapel, where Keira Knightley married Chiwetel Ejiofor in Love Actually, and there are weekly choral and organ concerts.
Stamping back into The Dorchester on a chilly December evening is the best bit of all. Garlands drape the marble balconies; a forest of fir trees scent the air and the resident pianist conjures up a few (classy) carols. It’s like Dickens, but with better canapés.
Upstairs, meanwhile, lift doors glide open onto deep corridor carpets that hush your footsteps like two inches of snow, while your room is as cosy as Christmas itself – characterful as only a building this old can be, but with baths, beds and furniture so comfy it’s like sinking into a cloud. Wake up here and every morning feels as exciting as 25 December.
Great Hotels Through Time available on 5 streaming