by Here we are again. Another year, another weird list from Tripadvisor. The world’s largest travel guide platform has revealed the winners of its Travelers’ Choice Best Hotels Awards, celebrating this year’s top hotels around the world, according to the platform’s global users .
Of course, preferring one particular hotel to another is largely a matter of personal taste but if the best hotel in the UK is the florid Hotel Colline de France in Gramado, Brazil, the garish Toulson Court in Scarborough. B&B or the Covent Garden Residence is the best hotel, then it’s time for me to hang up my room key and check out.
Do you use Tripadvisor? I have to admit that I can’t, except very often to check if a hotel I don’t know much about is acceptable or not. Positive reviews indicate that the place is well run but it’s hard to trust the truth in the opinion of many strangers who don’t even reveal their names and what they seem to love, maybe I don’t like and vice vice versa.
They sure love Covent Garden Residents. The entrance to the best hotel in the UK is not difficult to spot between the food and tobacco kiosk and a branch of Greggs on the corner of the Strand and Bedford Street, which leads into Covent Garden. I’ve never liked the Strand, a bleak, unsightly thoroughfare that leads to Trafalgar Square, although Covent Garden of course makes a great base for a central London hotel.
There is nothing memorable about the Resident, looks-wise. Gray is the main color – gray lobby, gray corridors, gray walled bedrooms with gray curtains with no personality except for wear, a few blue and red cushions on the beds with the same abstract print above them. If the hotel were to be judged on appearance alone, it certainly could not be considered the best in Britain, even taking into account the vagaries of taste – the idea is too far-fetched to think.
The same goes for facilities: this is a hotel with no restaurant, no breakfast room, no gym, no lounge, just 57 bedrooms ranging from not big to very small. All the rooms are the same, each with an integrated kitchenette (microwave, sink with Brita filter tap, kettle, Nespresso machine, tea and coffee); smart gray marble-tiled bathroom; A quality pocket-sprung bed with good linens; smart television; and a circular dining/work table with two chairs and an Anglepoise lamp by Paul Smith. My King room had a wall of windows overlooking the Beach. I used a chair for a bedside table and regretted the row of plugs and sockets that obstructed my view of the far wall.
Could this really be the best hotel in the whole of the UK? Is desire, character, history, a beautiful setting countless? In terms of value, although the standards of the hotel, including cleanliness, are high, and hotels in London are more expensive than ever, there are other similar properties in the area that come at a lower price and are even marked by Tripadvisor fans a little down on value for money. However, I think that two aspects (any of those mentioned, of course) raised the Resident to this peak and one of them, its staff, is great.
Perhaps the first reason is the hotel’s relationship with Tripadvisor. If you look at their website, you will see that the home page immediately trumps their high ranking; if you look at their listing on Tripadvisor, you’ll see that every review posted gets a grateful response from the hotel. Some hotels care about Tripadvisor and its algorithms more than others; those that do, such as the Resident, often attract more reviews and score higher.
If the hotel itself is bland and rather dull, its secret to success stands in a row of smiles in the lobby: the front staff, who inject warmth, personality and a genuine desire to help to an unusually high level. David Orr, chief executive of Resident Hotels, has plenty of experience injecting a human touch into affordable, no-frills hotels, starting in 1999 with City Inns which became Mint Hotels, and in 2020 launching Resident (formerly Nadler) in Covent Garden, Soho, Victoria, Kensington, Liverpool and in the summer, Edinburgh.
Patricia Segurola, the exciting general manager, leads a team that is not only immediate, relaxed, genuinely friendly but also a mine of information about London – culture, nightlife, restaurants, bars, shopping and so on – even building in-house ” insider knowledge” examined during their training. Most of the guests are tourists, many of them from the United States, but the team of 13 does their best to help them feel, as the hotel’s name suggests , like residents during their stay and to compensate the hotel that has no restaurant of its own.
Every early evening, Segurola hosts free drinks in the lobby where guests can meet and chat. “Some have no plans to visit London,” she tells me. “If they want, we can help them make one.” If Segurola ever leaves the Resident (she’s been there since the beginning) she could always get a job as a concierge at the Ritz. They don’t wear fancy uniforms and gold keys on their keys, but the staff here are amazing. “It’s all in the recruiting,” says Segurola. “It’s so important to choose people who can listen, communicate and who really care. Then we can train them.”
Soho Coffee Co has a short breakfast delivery menu for those like me who are too lazy to use their mini kitchens – and if you don’t want what’s on the list, they’ll go and get you what you want. Someone at the front desk heard me shout as I filled out the form that there was no croissant on the menu. I just ordered coffee to be delivered at 8am but when it arrived, miraculously, there were also two delicious croissants from a local patisserie. Such gestures make excellent hotels, but the best in the country? I don’t think so.
Fiona Duncan was a guest at the Covent Garden Residence (020 3146 1790), which offers doubles from £309, excluding breakfast.
