Here we go again. Another year, another strange listing from Tripadvisor. The world’s largest travel guide platform has announced the winners of its annual Travellers’ Choice Best of the Best Hotels Awards, celebrating this year’s highest-rated hotels around the world, according to the platform’s global users.
Of course, choosing a particular hotel over another is largely a matter of personal taste, but if the opulent, French-inspired Hotel Colline de France in Gramado, Brazil, is the best hotel in the world, the opulent Toulson Court in Scarborough is the best in the UK. If it’s a B&B or Resident Covent Garden’s best hotel, it’s time to hang up my room key and check out.
Do you use Tripadvisor? I must admit that I haven’t done this, except to check whether a hotel I know very little about is generally acceptable. Positive reviews show that a place is well run, but it’s hard to truly trust the opinions of countless strangers who won’t even reveal their real names, and what they like may be things I don’t like, and vice versa.
They absolutely love the resident Covent Garden. The barely noticeable entrance to the best hotel in the UK is wedged between a food and tobacco stall and a Greggs branch on the corner of the Strand and Bedford Street, leading to Covent Garden. I’ve never liked the Strand, a dreary, unprepossessing street that hurries towards Trafalgar Square, but Covent Garden is of course a great base for a central London hotel.
In terms of looks, there’s nothing memorable about Resident. Gray is the dominant color; gray lobby, gray corridors, boxy bedrooms with gray walls, gray curtains devoid of personality, a few blue and red cushions on the beds with the exact same abstract print on them. If the hotel were judged by its appearance alone, it would certainly not be considered the best hotel in Britain, and even considering the variations in taste, the idea is too farfetched to even consider.
The same goes for the facilities: This is a hotel with no restaurant, no breakfast room, no gym, no lounge, and only 57 bedrooms, ranging in size from very small to very small. All rooms are the same, each with an integrated kitchenette (microwave, sink with Brita filter tap, kettle, Nespresso machine, tea and coffee); stylish gray marble-clad bathroom; high quality pocket spring mattress with good linens; smart television; and a round dining/study table with two chairs and Paul Smith’s Anglepoise lamp. My King room had a wall of windows overlooking the Strand. I used a chair as a bedside table and regretted the row of plugs and sockets on the opposite wall obscuring my view.
Could this really be the best hotel in the UK? Charm, character, history, a beautiful location are of no use? When it comes to value, the hotel’s standards, including cleanliness, are high, and while hotels in London are pricier than ever, there are other similar properties in the area that come in at a lower price point, and even Tripadvisor fans rate these hotels as slightly lower value. money. However, I think two elements (none of the above, of course) push Resident to this top, and one of them, its staff, is impressive.
The first reason may lie in the hotel’s relationship with Tripadvisor. If you look at the website, you will see that the home page immediately advertises the high ranking; If you look at its listing on Tripadvisor, you’ll see that every review submitted has received an appreciative response from the hotel. Some hotels pay more attention to Tripadvisor and its algorithms than others; Those that do, like Resident, tend to get more reviews and higher ratings.
While the hotel itself is drab and rather boring, the secret to its success lies in a smiling row in the lobby: the front desk team that instills an unusually high degree of warmth, personality and a genuine desire to help. David Orr, managing director of Resident Hotels, is about injecting a human touch into no-frills, affordable hotels, starting with City Inns, which became Mint Hotels, in 1999, and launching Resident (formerly Nadler) in Covent Garden in 2020. has a lot of experience. Soho, Victoria, Kensington, Liverpool and Edinburgh in the summer.
Enthusiastic general manager Patricia Segurola is not only prompt, reassuring, genuinely friendly, but also very knowledgeable about London – culture, nightlife, restaurants, bars, shopping etc. – he leads a team that is a mine of information, even conducting an internal company interview. They are subjected to an “inside knowledge” test during their training. Most of the guests are tourists, mostly from the USA, but the team of 13 people, as the name of the hotel suggests, are staying at He does his best to help them feel like hotel residents during the time and to make up for the fact that the hotel does not have its own restaurant.
Segurola offers free drinks in the lobby where guests can meet and chat early each evening. “Some of them have no plans to visit London,” he told me. “We can help them build one if they want.” If Segurola left the Resident (he was there from the beginning), he could always get a job as a doorman at the Ritz. They don’t wear fancy uniforms or carry golden keys on their lapels, but the staff here are truly impressive. “It’s all about recruiting,” Segurola says. “It is very important to choose people who can listen, communicate and truly care. Then we can train them.”
For those like me who are too lazy to use their kitchenette, Soho Coffee Co has a short breakfast delivery menu; If you don’t want what’s on the list, they’ll go and get you what you want. As I was filling out the form, someone heard me muttering that there were no croissants on the menu. I only ordered coffee to be delivered at 8am, but when it arrived, miraculously, it also included two delicious croissants from a local patisserie. Moves like these are what make hotels great, but are they the best in the country? I do not think so.
Fiona Duncan was the guest of the event. Built Covent Garden (020 3146 1790) offers double rooms from £309 excluding breakfast.