Serviced Apartment vs Hotel in London: Which Should You Book?

The honest answer, before the detail: for one or two nights, book the hotel. From three nights a serviced apartment starts to win on most of the things that actually make a stay good or bad, and by a week it is not a close contest. This guide sets out where each one is better, what the numbers look like on real dates, and the questions worth asking any operator before you book.

• The short answer
• Where a hotel is still the right call
• What an apartment gives you back
• The maths, honestly
• Stays past a month, and the 28 day rule
• What you give up, and what to ask
• Questions we are asked most

The short answer

A hotel sells you a room and a service culture. A serviced apartment sells you a home for a while, with the service arranged around it. The choice is really about length of stay and what you intend to do with your evenings.

One or two nights, arriving late and leaving early, barely in the room: the hotel is the better buy, and nobody should pretend otherwise. Three nights or more, particularly with another person, with children, with work to do, or with a need to eat something that did not arrive under a cloche: the apartment wins, and it usually costs less as well.

Where a hotel is still the right call

Hotels are very good at arrival. There is a desk, a human behind it, and somebody who will take your bag while you find your phone. There is a bar downstairs at eleven at night, and a restaurant at seven in the morning, and neither requires a decision from you.

For a single night between meetings, that is worth paying for. It is worth paying for when you land at midnight and leave at dawn, when you want the anonymity of a lobby, or when the whole point of the trip is that somebody else is in charge of the details.

Hotels also carry the day-to-day things an apartment asks you to think about: the front desk that signs for a parcel, the porter who finds a taxi in the rain, the concierge who has a relationship with the restaurant you have left too late. A good apartment operator provides those too, but you should check that it does rather than assume it.

What an apartment gives you back

Space, and the right kind of it. A hotel room is one room. You sleep, work and eat in it, and if two of you are travelling, one is working on the bed. Our own one-bedroom apartments run to around seventy square metres with a separate living room and a proper table, and The William Jessop is a two-bedroom that sleeps up to seven, which simply has no hotel equivalent at a sensible price.

A kitchen, which changes the economics. Hotel breakfast is priced per head and in London it is rarely under twenty pounds each, every morning, whether or not anyone is hungry. A kitchen turns that into a supermarket delivery on the first evening and coffee in a dressing gown at seven. It also means a child can be fed at half past five, which anyone travelling with small children will recognise as the whole ballgame.

A washing machine. It sounds unglamorous. On any stay past four nights it saves a suitcase, and on a stay past two weeks it is the difference between living somewhere and camping there.

Privacy, and a front door. No corridor, no lobby, no small talk at the lift with a colleague you have spent all day with. For families with sleeping children, or anyone taking calls at difficult hours across time zones, a door that closes properly beats a sign that says do not disturb.

Room to have people in. A hotel room cannot hold a drinks before dinner, or a Sunday lunch, or a team spreading papers across a table. An apartment can, and that is often the thing that turns a work trip into something people enjoy.

The maths, honestly

This is where most comparisons go vague, so here are our own numbers, which you can check on the apartment pages.

Our three apartments are in Canary Wharf: The Mellish Residence at £275 a night for a one-bedroom sleeping up to five, The John Cabot at £427, and The William Jessop at £580 for a two-bedroom sleeping up to seven. Each booking adds a cleaning fee, £80 or £120 depending on the apartment, and a service fee of five per cent. There is nothing else, and the total is shown in full before you pay.

The cleaning fee is the part that decides the break-even, because it is charged once rather than nightly. On a two-night stay it is a meaningful slice of the bill. On a ten-night stay it disappears into the rate. That is the arithmetic behind the advice at the top: short stays flatter hotels, longer stays flatter apartments, and the crossover sits at about three nights.

Then set that against what a hotel adds after the room rate. Breakfast for two, twice the room when a family needs a second one, the minibar, the laundry bag at four pounds a shirt. A pair of connecting hotel rooms in a decent London hotel is not a cheaper way to house a family of four than a two-bedroom apartment. It is usually a more expensive way to house them less comfortably.

Two things worth knowing about how we price. VIP members pay ten per cent less on every stay, which on a week at The William Jessop is more than the cleaning fee. And a refundable security deposit hold is taken after your booking is confirmed, ahead of arrival, not at the moment of paying.

Stays past a month, and the 28 day rule

If you are staying a month or more, there is a genuine tax difference that very few comparisons mention.

For stays in a hotel or similar establishment that run past 28 continuous days, HMRC's reduced value rule means that from the 29th day VAT is charged only on the part of the payment that is not for the accommodation itself. The detail is in VAT Notice 709/3 and, at more length, in HMRC's own manual. It does not make the stay exempt, and how it applies depends on the establishment and the way the charge is made, so treat this as the thing to raise with your accountant rather than as advice from us. We are not tax advisers.

What it means in practice is that the gap between a hotel and an apartment narrows on paper for very long stays, and widens again on everything else: a month in one room is a long month. If you are moving rather than visiting, our relocation guide covers how a stay of three months actually works, and The William Jessop takes stays of up to a hundred and eighty nights.

What you give up, and what to ask

The honest weakness of the serviced apartment market is consistency. Many operators are really listings businesses: the apartments belong to other people, the standard varies by address, and reception is a call centre in another country. That is the gap worth interrogating before you book anywhere, including here.

Four questions that sort the market quickly.

Whose apartment is it? Ask directly. Luxury Experience AI owns and operates the three in Canary Wharf, and anywhere else in London comes from our curated list, where the apartment belongs to an operator we work with. We say which before you book, and the name is on your booking before you pay.

Who answers at eleven at night? Our AI concierge answers at any hour, with a human desk behind it from 09:00 to 22:00, London time. Ask any operator what happens outside office hours, and ask it in a way that requires a specific answer.

What is the total, including everything? Not the headline rate. The rate, the cleaning fee, the service fee, and anything charged on top, such as a pet. Ours are all on the apartment's page before you commit.

What happens if plans change? Cancellation terms differ by apartment and are printed on each page: ours generally allow free cancellation up to fourteen days before arrival, with the cleaning fee retained inside that window. Read them before you pay, because a cheap rate with brutal terms is not cheap.

Questions we are asked most

Is a serviced apartment cheaper than a hotel in London? For one or two nights, usually not, because the cleaning fee is spread over very few nights. From three nights it generally is, and once breakfast, laundry and a second room for children are counted, the gap widens considerably.

Can I book a serviced apartment for a single night? With us, at two of the three: The John Cabot and The William Jessop take single nights. The Mellish Residence has a five-night minimum, which suits a working week or a relocation bridge rather than an overnight stop.

Is there a reception, or somebody to let me in? There is no lobby. Access is arranged before you arrive and the concierge handles everything a front desk would, from an early check-in to a car at six in the morning. For guests who specifically want a staffed lobby at three in the morning, a hotel is the better answer and we will say so.

Can I stay with a dog? At The Mellish Residence, by arrangement. The other two do not take pets, so tell the concierge before booking rather than after, and there is a charge for a stay with a pet which is shown with the quote.

What about a stay of several months? Ask rather than booking online. The William Jessop takes stays of up to a hundred and eighty nights, and for a month or more we quote the stay as a whole. Our relocation guide explains how those stays are put together.

How do I compare a specific set of dates? Tell our concierge the dates and how many of you there are. It will quote the exact total for each apartment, including the cleaning and service fees, and tell you plainly if a hotel would suit you better for those particular nights.

The test worth running

Take the dates you are actually thinking about, and price them both ways properly. Not the room rate against the nightly rate, but the total: breakfasts, laundry, the second room, the taxi to the restaurant you could have cooked in.

Tell our concierge the dates and the party, and it will give you our side of that comparison in seconds, with nothing hidden and no obligation. If the answer for your trip is a hotel, it will tell you that too.

Last checked against our catalogue on 23 September 2026. Prices, fixtures and opening times change, so we say what we checked and when.