Express By Holiday Inn London Limehouse

If you compare to what else you can find in London for the same price, then this hotel is great value for money. The rooms are large and clean, and the service is good. Yes, its far away from the center, but the DLR station is quite close (traveling time: 10 min by walk + 10 min per train). If you only stay in London for a weekend, then I would not recommend it, exactly because of the distance to London center. Then I recommend to pay a little extra for the hotel but then you could also skip the Metro 'traveling card'.

I would definitely consider to stay here again, if I had to stay in London for a longer time, and/or if I was looking for a budget hotel.

Wanted a decent budget hotel for a sightseeing weekend with my parents in London - clean, comfortable, close to the centre, but above all reasonably priced. Ambitious criteria, but I did my research, trawled through reviews here on Tripadvisor and elsewhere, and was satisfied that this place looked like a good bet. It was.

The hotel is nothing to look at from the outside, but the rooms were smart, clean, comfortable and, being a Holiday Inn, completely characterless. The hotel is right next to a cement works and a busy highway but I was near the front, and with the window closed I wasn't disturbed. There's no restaurant, just a continental breakfast buffet (included in the price) and a bar in the evening, which was all we needed. Wireless internet was available, at a charge.

Service was generally excellent on the few occasions we had need of it. I asked to move since the air conditioning didn't work and it was no hassle - I was in a new (cooled) room within ten minutes. (Fortunately they weren't fully booked).

Location is a bit out in the sticks and not in the best area, either (we didn't have any problems, even though we were coming back to the hotel late at night - not sure I'd recommend it alone, though). However, it's five minutes' walk to Limehouse station where you can catch buses, or the DLR and C2C train, which zip you into Bank, Tower Gateway, Fenchurch Street Station, or in the other direction, Canary Wharf, the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich. You'll likely need to switch to buses or the Tube, but with some planning (the journey planner on the Transport for London website came in handy) you can get where you want to go relatively quickly.

If you're in the mood for a stroll, as we were, you can pop across the road and walk along the river into Wapping, where you can find the Prospect of Whitby, reputedly London's oldest riverside pub and a charming place to have a few drinks on a summer afternoon.

They do charge a daily rate (£10 when we were there) for parking in the hotel garage at the rear, but there's little alternative.

Simple, efficient, relatively cheap. If you're just looking for somewhere clean and comfortable to sleep, not bothered about the area (it's not Mayfair) and don't mind a bit of a journey to get to anything worth seeing, you could do much, much worse.