A serviced apartment in the English capital will add a new dimension to your stay – and save you money.
If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life, cautioned 18th century wit Samuel Johnson. However, anyone who has swum against the human tide on Oxford Street or wrestled the phalanxes of gap-year students storming the leatherwear and jewellery stalls of Camden would doubtless counter Johnson’s assertion. Sometimes there’s simply nothing a battle-hardened London tourist yearns for more than slipping their weary feet into a pair of slippers and sipping a cup of Britain’s favourite brew in a home away from home. Yet this is a desire that the big hotel groups, with their focus on unwavering sameness of experience, often struggle to satisfy.
“London serviced-apartment stays used to be for business clients on longer stays, who didn’t want an anonymous hotel for the duration,” says George Westwell, director of The Cheval Group, which has 25 years in the trade and was one of the first companies in London to let serviced apartments.
“Tourists used to think hotels were the only option open to them. We’re finding that’s changing, though. Now they’re becoming educated in their options,” Westwell says.
Those who may find a hotel impersonal can opt instead for a luxury townhouse or secluded mews, he says. “You get privacy, space and comfort – and you can invite your local friends for dinner.”
The Cheval Group, which offers properties in Knightsbridge and Chelsea, state-of-the-art technology, fine china and on-demand nanny and concierge services, is top of the heap when it comes to posh London pieds-à-terre. Yet these days apartment stays aren’t just the choice of Manhattan hedge-fund traders holidaying with the nuclear family. In this modern globetrotting era, it seems we all want a diversity of accommodation experience.
Alexis de Belloy is at the sharper end of the market. His company, holiday-rentals.co.uk, is one of the leaders in the fast-proliferating, internet-based, apartment-letting industry. De Belloy’s business offers an opportunity for owners of a diverse range of properties to advertise cost-effectively. The result is something for every taste – from Notting Hill flats to classic town flats in Kensington (every American vacationer’s favourite London haunt) and modern loft apartments in the super-trendy Hoxton Square area of east London. Its strength is in numbers. “In 2004, we listed about 7000 properties, compared to 20,000 today,” says Belgium-born de Belloy, “and enquiries per property, whatever the property style, are up 25 per cent on last year. The demographics defy categorisation. Australia and the US are our biggest markets, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s a reflection of how the internet travel culture allows the flexing of consumer preference.”
All this flexing signifies a muscular market force: consumers are abandoning the packaged city break to pick and choose the elements of their perfect London stay. And the trend is expanding across the European short-break market, too. Pablo Zubicaray operates Friendly Rentals, a serviced-apartment rental company based in Barcelona, the city that boasts the most developed short-let apartment-rental market in the world. He says the British are his biggest clients, followed by Americans and Australians.
“The apartment-stay industry can only become bigger, though – we’re seeing Japanese and Chinese tourists catching on to the benefits of seeing a city this way.”
So whether you just want to put your feet up after an intensive day of sightseeing or shopping, or party till dawn with the Shoreditch cool kids, take a tour of some of London’s best short-let apartments. The venerable Dr Johnson would undoubtedly endorse the value of a warm and welcoming hearth to come home to.
Phoenix HouseChelsea.Top choice for: the alpha couple.
Plaza on the River Club & ResidenceAlbert Embankment.Top choice for: the trendy business traveller.
Flat One, Bermondsey Street
Near the Tower of London.Top choice for: those who like a little O2 with their big city.
Little Gains CottageKent.Top choice for: would-be aristos.
Source:
Qantas The Australian Way December 2007
Updated: August 2008