The Waldorf Hilton, London
We’ve mentioned before that we are Hilton people. I have three Hilton credit cards, and earn a lot of points with them. We use those points for free stays at nice Hiltons around the world. When surveying the cities we would be visiting during our 2025 Europe trip, we tried to zero in on the city with the best hotels for our free stay so we’d be getting the most out of our points. I suggested London, since I remembered that London has some pretty swank hotels.
Hilton has a ton of properties in London (as do all other hotel chains), so it took some time to decide what part of town we wanted to stay in and which hotel would offer the most baller experience without costing an exorbitant amount of points. We decided on Covent Garden because of its proximity to museums and shopping, and a hotel with a recognizable name.
The Waldorf Hilton in Covent Garden
The Waldorf Hilton is located on a semicircular street smack in the middle of the theater district of Covent Garden. The location is nice if you want to walk to the British Museum (which is free!) or Regent Street, though if you’re more of a Shoreditch person than a Soho person, it may not be your prime area. We took a cab from London City Airport (where the passport control was UNBELIEVABLY fast compared to Heathrow), which was kind of expensive, but after ten million hours on planes, we really didn’t care.
The doorman was very friendly. He was dressed in preposterous old-timey clothes, which Eriko really liked. The staff was generally helpful as we checked in and at all other times. Our Gold status got us an uprgraded room, but not access to the Executive Lounge because we weren’t on the Executive floor. This is the first time this has happened to us. Every other time we’ve ever gotten an upgraded room, we were also given access to the Executive Lounge. We didn’t really care, but this means there will be no review of the Executive Lounge.
The decor of the lobby is quite old-timey, and it immediately became clear that this hotel was not a ground-up Hilton, but an existing hotel that had been turned into a Hilton. The plus side of that is that the exterior and lobby have some British charm to them. The downside is that a lot of little things you may expect from a Hilton aren’t delivered. For example, the elevator was weird. It was one of those where you press your key against the little pad, and then touch the button for your room. Except at the Waldorf, you have to hold your key there for a full three seconds before it will work. We watched as many people struggled with this.
The hallway on our floor (remember that in Europe, the ground floor is floor 0, so if you’re on floor 4, that’s floor 5 in Japan or America) was clean and the walls covered in abstract art. We were far from the elevator, but nonetheless could hear a bit of noise in our room at night.
Guest Rooms at the Waldorf Hilton
As with most London hotels, even chain hotels, the rooms at the Waldorf Hilton are small. Our upgraded room was still pretty tiny by Hilton standards, and lacked some of the key amenities. For example, there was no Nespresso machine, only a kettle and instant coffee or tea. We found that the kettle heated up water way too hot, so one had to wait a long time before drinking one’s coffee/tea. However, they gave us cookies that we saved for future flights/train rides.
The bed wasn’t gigantic, but was comfortable enough, and the room was mostly quiet except for when other guests decided to get rowdy in the hallway. Again, this is in contrast to most Hiltons, which are usually very quiet and have very large beds when you get upgraded. Overall, I would say this was a decent room. I once stayed at the Radisson Blu in Kensington, and that room was as small as a budget hotel in Tokyo. I’ve also stayed at the Charlotte Street Hotel (someone else was paying) and my room had multiple levels & more books in it than… a place with a lot of books. What I’m saying is the room wasn’t amazing, but wasn’t that bad, either.
Breakfast buffet at the Waldorf Hilton in London
If there’s one thing British people know, it’s breakfast. I’m not saying they always do it well, but they do a lot of it. We stumbled downstairs with confused looks on our faces until someone pointed us to the restaurant, which is a decent walk from the hotel lobby. The buffet is gigantic, with pastries, fruit, cold cuts, cereal, yogurt, juice, and all the makings of a full English breakfast. Eriko tried her first fry up and was happy. Another day, she tried her first crumpets.
I mostly stuck to oatmeal and granola and was happy. Maria D did a great job of keeping us full of coffee when we needed it. You could tell who the British people were and who the foreign guests were because the British people would get everything from the hot trays, while the foreigners would just grab eggs, bacon, and sausage, and said no to the mushrooms and tomatoes and beans. What mismatched cultures we have. I tried the bacon and sausage and black pudding, and I’ve had better versions of all those things at other hotels. All in all, the breakfast was pretty good, especially if you order off the menu, and probably the best thing about this hotel. Not the best buffet ever (it’s no match for the buffets at the many Hilton properties in Thailand), but it’ll do.
Our bathroom and shower at the Waldorf Hilton
Among the many signs that this hotel was not originally built as a Hilton was the bathroom, which while not super big, was super looooooooong. The walk to the toilet in the middle of the night was lengthy enough that we just left the mirror light on because it was too far away to keep us awake. The facilities were okay, though the knob to mess with the TV volume from the bathroom wasn’t working. Sad.
The shower was a bit of an issue. I don’t know who decided that hotel showers shouldn’t have doors or curtains and instead should have a bit of glass that extends only halfway across the tub, but this person should be drawn and quartered. It is not possible to keep water off the floor, even if you’re really careful with the clawfoot. We had to mop up water every single day. And at the back of the shower, there were three metal bars that looked like a towel rack or tiny ladder, but were super hot and would burn anyone who touched them. It seems like a bad idea to not only put these hot bars there, but to make them look exactly like a thing you’d naturally want to grab hold of when getting out of a slippery shower.
Room Service at the London Waldorf Hilton
One night, we left Selfridge’s super late and many restaurants were already closed, so we ordered room service. Eriko wanted to try fish and chips, and I thought a Waldorf salad was in order since we were at the Waldorf. The room service delivery charge was 7 pounds - not great, but standard.
The Waldorf salad was really good, but impossibly small. I’m used to WS being served out of a giant Tupperware container at a picnic, not scattered across a plate like so many crumbs. The fish & chips were okay - decent chips and tartare sauce - but the fish wasn’t fried in the traditional fashion. This breaded fillet seemed healthier, which was good for us, but was on a bunch of mushy peas that tasted weird. I can’t describe exactly how they were weird, but… not right is all I’ll say. The food was fine, but I wouldn’t order from room service there again - I expected a lot better from a hotel of this caliber.
I also sent out some laundry while I was there, and it was… expensive. When we got to Barcelona, I also used the laundry service at Hotel Bagues, an objectively better hotel by almost all measures, and it was both cheaper and faster. I’d say that if you have the option of avoiding room service and laundry, you should. Save your money for bread pudding.
Verdict: is the Waldorf Hilton worth a stay?
The Waldorf Hilton is a very nice hotel. It’s not the nicest I’ve ever stayed at, even in London, but it’s definitely not the worst, and would generally rate highly by our standards. That said… it’s not a Hilton. When you book with a chain, you’re not just choosing quality, but consistency, and though we had a good stay, the consistency of Hilton’s brand was lacking. Little things like the bathroom, lack of Nespresso machine, the thin walls letting noise in, the elevator, the lackluster room service, the impossibly expensive laundry service… it was all okay, but not the easy experience you get with a trusted brand. I think Hilton should shift this hotel onto its Waldorf Astoria brand or one of its other hotel collections to avoid this issue. But all in all, it was a good stay.
If you wanted to book this hotel for a random date in October (we stayed in April, but let’s use October as an example), a basic queen room would cost you £518 ($683) per night with the Hilton Honors discount, £545 ($722) without. In contrast, the Conrad Koh Samui has five different room types available that same week in October for less money, and every room has a private infinity pool and incredible views. You know how we feel about that hotel, so if you’re paying cash, I’d say the Waldorf Hilton in London is way overpriced.
We paid 80,000 Hilton Honors points per night to stay at the Waldorf, for a total of 320,000 points. Compare that to the 95,000 points per night it cost us to stay at the Conrad Koh Samui last March, a much better deal by any standard. There are a lot of other Hilton properties in London, some that cost more points, some less. Unless you really want to stay at a hotel with “Waldorf” in the name or desperately desire this exact location, there’s no reason not to roll the dice on one of those other choices. The Waldorf Hilton is a superb hotel, but you can find a better deal without leaving the Hilton website.
Where is the Waldorf Hilton located in London?
Address: Aldwych, London WC2B 4DD, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 20 7836 2400
Website: The Waldorf Hilton
How to stay at the Waldorf Hilton for free (sort of)
Okay, so using points for a hotel stay doesn’t exactly make it free, and we don’t necessarily recommend using your points on this particular hotel, but it was way cheaper than paying the cash rate, that’s for sure. We earn hotel points by using rewards credit cards.
Basically, if you’re going to buy something, you might as well pay for it with a credit card, and if you’re going to use a credit card, you might as well use the one that gets you the most free stuff. As long as you’re responsible with your cards, pay off the balance in full every month, and don’t buy things you wouldn’t normally buy, your only “cost” is the opportunity cost of what you could earn with another card. We’ve used credit cards to get business-class flights and a lot of other stuff, but lately, we use our Hilton cards for almost everything because we love their product and the hotels we’ve gotten to stay at, as well as the perks the cards provide.
As of this writing, the Hilton Surpass Card (which I used on this trip) offers 12x points on all spend at Hilton properties and 6x in many other categories, Gold status, and a yearly free night if you spend $15,000 in a calendar year. There’s also a $50 statement credit every quarter for spending at Hilton properties (like expensive room service and laundry), no foreign transaction fees, and a sign-up bonus of 130,000 points if you spend $3,000 in the first six months. Most of these benefits are better than those for the Hilton Business Card, and the only real downsides to it are the $150 annual fee (which may be offset depending on the value you get from the card) and the fact that for some reason it never works with contactless machines in Europe. But as mentioned, we have 3 Hilton cards, and this is the one we primarily use, so we recommend it.
The Hilton links above aren’t affiliate links, so if you want this card, shop around and maybe try going to the AmEx website in an incognito window to find the best sign-up deal. And as always, learn about using credit cards before diving into a hobby that can either help or hurt your credit and finances depending on how you do it. Until next time!
