What Are People Using Instead Of Airbnb In London?

London has whole streets of flats, and a good number of them are let to visitors, but no survey in this site's research tracks which booking route former Airbnb users have moved to. So this article does the honest version of the job: it lays out the alternatives that actually exist and can be compared on real numbers, from the 42 stays on our roster. The four workable substitutes are aparthotels with kitchens, whole-unit apartments booked like hotel rooms, private rooms inside hostels, and conventional budget hotels.

An Airbnb stay usually promised three things: a whole place or a private room, a kitchen, and a price below a hotel's. Each of those three exists on the roster in a different form. Staycity Aparthotels London Deptford Bridge delivers the kitchen and the apartment with a hotel-style 24-hour reception attached, from £69 per night on the dates sampled. Whole-unit apartments such as Imperial Court Suites in Bayswater start at £122 per night. Hostel private rooms, for example at Clink261 near King's Cross, undercut almost everything. And a plain budget hotel room, the Dolphin Hotel at £49 per night being the lowest private room on the roster, needs no explanation and no key-collection arrangement.

The comparison that matters is not brand versus brand. It is what each format gives up and keeps relative to the flat-rental habit: cooking facilities, your own front door, someone at a desk if something goes wrong, and a cancellation term printed before you pay. We compared the sampled rates across all four formats, and the arithmetic follows.

Why Aparthotels Answer The Airbnb Question Best

An aparthotel is a self-catering apartment with a hotel wrapped around it: a kitchen or kitchenette, a private bathroom, and a staffed reception with luggage storage, all bookable as a single room rate. On the roster the six aparthotels run from £69 to £121 per night at their lowest sampled rates, which is the closest like-for-like replacement for a small flat rental.

The format solves the two complaints that most often push people away from flat rentals: there is no key-collection rendezvous with an off-site host, and there is a front desk when the boiler fails. Staycity Aparthotels London Deptford Bridge lists a 24-hour reception, luggage storage and a lift, with studio and one-bedroom apartments, both with kitchens. The listing shows a 4.6 out of 5 rating across 1,362 reviews. At the other end of the price ladder, Líbere London Edgware Road, from £121 per night, offers singles and family rooms with a lift and a paid breakfast option.

The price spread between aparthotels is wide enough to be worth reading closely. The sampled monthly range at Aptel East in Tower Hamlets runs from £97 to £231, the widest band of the six, while Staycity's sampled range is £66 to £124. A rate is only the lowest figure on the dates sampled, one-night check-ins on the third Wednesday of each month, so treat the bottom number as a floor rather than an expectation. The live rate varies with date and availability. Two of the six aparthotels, Staycity and Aptel East, print a 24-hour reception; the others show the field as Not stated, which means unstated rather than absent, and the live listing is the place to confirm it.

Where an aparthotel beats a flat rental outright is on party size flexibility. Lamington Apartments in Hammersmith lists studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, so a group of four can take one unit rather than coordinating two separate bookings. Its sampled rates start at £103 per night, with a monthly sampled range of £103 to £228, and the listing shows an 8.4 out of 10 rating across 1,327 reviews. Family rooms are noted on the listing, which is the row's own wording rather than an inference. The same family-rooms note appears on Líbere's row, so the format covers more than solo travellers and couples.

The one thing aparthotels generally do not offer is dorm-bed pricing. Nobody sells a bunk in a studio kitchenette. If your reason for leaving flat rentals was price rather than privacy, the hostel private room, covered further down, is the cheaper half of this comparison. If your reason was the friction, the front desk is the point, and the desk is what you are paying a small premium for over a raw apartment.

For readers weighing the format against a hotel chain's smallest rooms, our guide to aparthotels in London works through the same rows in more depth.

Whole-Unit Apartments You Book Like A Hotel Room

Six whole-unit apartments sit on the roster, from £110 to £148 per night at their lowest sampled rates, each a self-contained flat with a kitchen booked under one rate rather than a deposit-plus-balance arrangement. Five of the six are in Zone 1 or Zone 2, clustered around Bayswater and the South Bank.

These are the stays closest in shape to what people rented on Airbnb: your own front door, a kitchen, no reception culture to participate in. Imperial Court Suites and Imperial Court Studios sit 2 to 3 minutes from Bayswater station in Zone 1, at £122 and £148 per night respectively, with check-in from 2 PM and a kitchen noted on both listings. Both carry a free cancellation flag, which is printed in the row and worth checking on the live listing for the exact conditions. Hyde Park Superior Apartments, 4 minutes from Queensway, samples from £145.

The trade-offs are the mirror image of the aparthotel. What you gain in self-containment you lose in support: for these three Bayswater flats the listings do not state a 24-hour reception or luggage storage, so plan arrival around the stated check-in window rather than assuming a desk. The rating pools are also smaller and middling: 7 out of 10 across 642 reviews for Imperial Court Suites, 6.4 out of 10 across 610 for Hyde Park Superior and 6 out of 10 across 558 for the Studios, which is a fact about the listings rather than a verdict on the flats.

Away from Bayswater the picture improves on rating. Centra Wharf near Canary Wharf samples from £110 per night with a 7.2 out of 10 rating across 282 reviews, and Amazing Place To Stay near Stockwell shows 8.8 out of 10 across 136 reviews from £131. That Stockwell rating comes from a small pool, so read the reviews rather than the number alone. Elegant Studio Flat in West Kensington, 8.8 out of 10 across 17 reviews, is the thinnest evidence base on the entire roster; with fewer than 15 meaningful data points, treat the score as indicative only.

There is also a middle category worth naming: the studio-style budget hotel. Central Hoxton Shoreditch lists an Economy Double Room and a Studio side by side, from £105 per night, with a kitchen noted in the listing. Studios2Let North Gower sells Small, Economy and Classic Studios from £97 per night near Euston Square. These are hotel buildings with kitchen facilities in some units, which for many readers is precisely the Airbnb shape with the hotel safety net reattached. Studios2Let's check-in window, 14:00 to 18:30, is the narrowest on the roster and worth planning an arrival around, since its row does not state a 24-hour reception.

For a fuller walk-through of this format, see short stay apartments in London.

Hostel Private Rooms: The Cheapest Own-Door Option

If the appeal of a flat rental was simply a private room at a low price, hostel private rooms deliver it cheapest: private rooms at Clink261 and Generator London sample from £18 per bed per night in dorms, while St Christopher's London Bridge and Safestay Elephant & Castle list private rooms alongside dorms, with the format's lowest entry costs on the roster.

The hostel private room is the most under-used substitute on this list. Clink261, 6 minutes from King's Cross St. Pancras, lists private rooms alongside shared dorms and girls-only dorms, with a kitchen and a 24-hour reception on the listing. Wombat's City Hostel in Tower Hamlets goes further: breakfast is included, private bathrooms are marked yes, and female-only dorms are available, from £21 per bed per night, rated 9.1 out of 10 across 19,145 reviews, the largest review base in this article.

The honest limitation is that the roster does not print a separate private-room rate for every hostel. Where a row shows only "from £X per bed per night", the private room's price is on the live listing, and we will not invent a figure for it. What the rows do show is which hostels have the format at all: Generator London (dorms, quads, private rooms), Palmers Lodge Swiss Cottage (double and twin rooms), and St Christopher's London Bridge, which adds capsule pods to the usual mix, from £15 per bed per night. A guest review of Wombat's sums up the format's appeal in one line: "I think this was a great place to stay. It was clean and comfortable."

Two rows answer the classic flat-rental worry, the stranger in the next room, in opposite ways. Wombat's sets a minimum age of 18, as do YHA London Thameside, Astor Victoria and Urbany Hostel, which screens for a quieter corridor. Park Villa in Bow takes the other path entirely, listing family rooms alongside dorms with a paid breakfast, from £26 per bed per night, rated 8 out of 10 across 1,007 reviews. A family room in a hostel is functionally a cheap apartment with a shared kitchen.

The whole hostel-versus-hotel trade-off, dorm etiquette included, is worked through in is it better to stay in a hotel or hostel in London, and the full list is in the best hostels in London.

Budget Hotels: The Simplest Swap Of All

Eighteen budget hotels sit on the roster, with private rooms from £49 per night and a median of £77.5 across the budget hotels and aparthotels. Most offer private bathrooms, family rooms and a 24-hour reception, which covers the practical needs a flat rental covered, minus the kitchen.

For plenty of readers the answer to the Airbnb question is unglamorous: book a small hotel room. Dolphin Hotel, 5 minutes from Paddington, samples from £49 per night, the lowest private-room rate on the roster, with family rooms and private bathrooms marked yes. Its 3.7 out of 5 rating across 845 reviews is the trade: cheapest sampled price, weakest score in the group. Hotel DC in Forest Gate samples from £53 with 4.3 out of 5 across 523 reviews, and Zedwell Greenwich from £60 with capsule-style rooms and air conditioning noted on the listing.

Zone 1 cheapness clusters around King's Cross and Bloomsbury. Princess Hotel samples from £62 per night with shared bathrooms, the Alhambra from £76, and St. Athans from £75 with family rooms and a 21 minute journey to Charing Cross. The Alhambra's own review base, 8 out of 10 across 3,667 reviews, is the strongest of the three. A guest review of the Alhambra puts the location case plainly: "The property was in a great location. It is a short walk to the train station."

The kitchen is what you give up. Only a minority of budget-hotel rows mention one: Prince Arthur in Camden notes a kitchen, Central Hoxton Shoreditch notes a kitchen, and the rest are silent or not stated. If self-catering is the reason you rented flats, the aparthotel column above is your column. If the kitchen was incidental, a £60 to £80 room with a desk and a door is the simplest substitution in this article, and our budget hotels in London guide sorts all 18 by area and price.

How To Get The Cheapest Hotels In London?

The sampled month series points to January as the cheapest month: the private-room median falls to £81 and the dorm median to £20 on the dates sampled, against £123 and £20 in November and a £156 private-room peak in October. Choosing an aparthotel or apartment over a hotel, and Zone 2 over Zone 1, moves the floor more than any booking tactic.

This is another question where no hard data exists on booking timing itself: our facts contain no study of how far ahead to book or which weekday prices dip. The month table is the honest substitute. It samples one-night check-ins on the third Wednesday of each month across the roster, so it shows seasonality, not a booking-window rule. On those dates, dorm medians run from £20 in November and January to £34 in June, and private-room medians from £81 in January to £156 the following October. November and December sit close together at £123 and £118, then the floor drops away in January before the spring climb.

Format choice is the bigger lever than timing. The lowest sampled dorm bed on the roster is £14 at Smart Camden Inn Hostel; the lowest sampled private room is £49 at Dolphin Hotel; the lowest sampled aparthotel is £69 at Staycity Deptford Bridge; whole flats start at £110. The gap between the cheapest bed and the cheapest flat on the same roster dwarfs the £20 or so a lucky month choice saves.

Geography compounds it. Stratford's three budget hotels sample from £53 with a 44 minute median journey to Charing Cross, while Earl's Court & Kensington's three sample from £76 at a 25 minute median. You are trading roughly 19 minutes each way for roughly £23 a night at the sampled floors. Hammersmith & West Kensington sits between at £72 from and 40 minutes. These are roster figures, not opinions about the areas.

One more angle belongs here because flat-renters ask it: the tax picture. No visitor levy is charged in London yet; the government has said mayors will be given the power to introduce an Overnight Visitor Levy, charged as a percentage of the accommodation cost rather than a flat fee, with a Bill to follow. And short-term holiday lets and serviced apartments are generally standard-rated at 20% VAT where the provider is VAT-registered, per the government's hotel VAT notice. Whether a displayed price includes VAT is shown on the live listing, so check before comparing a flat rate against a hotel rate.

What To Check Before Booking Any Flat-Style Stay

Four fields separate a good flat-style booking from a bad one on this roster: the kitchen flag, the check-in window, the cancellation flag, and the walk-to-station minutes. Every one of them is printed in the listing rows, and every one of them is 'Not stated' on at least one property, which means unstated, not absent.

Read the rows literally. When Imperial Court Suites shows a free cancellation flag, that is a printed yes; when Staycity's row shows the same field as Not stated, the live listing holds the answer and the article will not guess it. The same discipline applies to bathrooms: Princess Hotel and Prince Arthur print shared bathrooms explicitly, Bob W Earl's Court prints private, and several apartment rows simply do not state it. Never read a silent field as a no.

Transport arithmetic is printed and checkable. Every stay's minutes-to-Charing-Cross figure is the fastest public-transport journey starting at 10:00 on a weekday, per the TfL Journey Planner, so a flat near Deptford Bridge DLR at 35 minutes is directly comparable with a Bayswater flat at 31. Add daily travel cost to the room rate before deciding: TfL's capping page lists adult daily pay-as-you-go caps of £8.90 for Zones 1 to 2 and £10.50 for Zones 1 to 3, and TfL's published caps are the figure to check, not a blogger's memory.

The table below compresses the whole decision into the four formats.

A second table shows the price ladder at the sampled floors, because the spread is the argument.

The pattern across all of it: the closer a stay sits to the Airbnb shape, the more of the hotel infrastructure you give up, and the price ladder charges you for keeping it. A £14 bed has a kitchen down the hall; a £148 flat in Bayswater has a kitchen to yourself and, on the row, no stated reception. The £69 to £103 aparthotel band is where the two curves cross, which is why Cheap Hotels London puts the aparthotel format at the top of this comparison rather than the bottom. Whichever rung you settle on, check availability for your dates before assuming the sampled floor holds, because a sampled rate is a floor from one night, not a promise.

Common Questions About Airbnb Alternatives In London

What Are People Using Instead Of Airbnb In London?

No usage statistics exist for this question in our research, so no claim about what "people" use is made here. The comparable alternatives on our 42-stay roster are aparthotels with kitchens from £69 per night, whole-unit apartments from £110, hostel private rooms from £14 to £26 per bed, and budget hotel rooms from £49.

Are aparthotels cheaper than renting a flat in London?

No comparable flat-rental price series exists in our facts, so we make no claim about flat rents. On the roster itself, aparthotels sample from £69 per night and whole-unit apartments from £110, with kitchens in both formats. The live rate for either varies by date and availability.

Do London hostels have private rooms?

Yes, several do. Clink261, Generator London, Wombat's City Hostel, Palmers Lodge Swiss Cottage and St Christopher's London Bridge all list private rooms alongside dorms. Where the row shows only a per-bed price, the private room rate is on the live listing.

How To Get The Cheapest Hotels In London?

On the dates sampled, January is the cheapest month, with a private-room median of £81 and a dorm median of £20. Choosing format moves more money than choosing month: the sampled floor runs £14 for a dorm bed, £49 for a budget hotel room, £69 for an aparthotel and £110 for a whole flat.

Is there a tourist tax on London stays?

No visitor levy is charged in London yet. The government has said mayors will be given the power to introduce an Overnight Visitor Levy, charged as a percentage of the accommodation cost, with a Bill to follow. No rate or start date exists in our facts.