Hotel Review: Hilton London Metropole

Just 22 minutes from Heathrow airport by Express train, this London hotel offers convenience as well as comfort

Key selling points for travel agents: 

• The hotel is just a seven-minute walk from Paddington Station
• Rooms have powerful, easy-to-operate air-con systems
• In-room amenities are plentiful and include kettles, coffee machines, irons and ironing boards
• The hotel is smoke-free and pet-friendly

First Impressions: The joy of getting from London Heathrow to my hotel room in central London in 22 minutes is the first benefit of booking a stay at the London Hilton Metropole. The hotel is just up the road from Paddington Station, which is a 15-minute train ride from the airport on the Heathrow Express (£25/US$33 one way).

The hotel lobby is a hive of activity, testament to the hotel’s popularity. Staff are warm and welcoming with Arabic speakers available for Middle East guests. Check-in is swift and, within minutes, I was met by a blast of Baltic air-conditioning as I enter my room, which has been chilled to 18C.

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The Rooms: Overlooking the rooftops of London, my ninth-floor room is equipped with all the essentials that are increasingly absent in Europe’s new wave of pared-back four-star city hotels favouring style over content. Here, there’s an iron and ironing board, a good quality hairdryer, and a coffee machine and a kettle, as well as traditional British biscuits and Yorkshire Tea. There’s also a big TV at the foot of a comfy Hilton-standard bed and enough wardrobe space and hangers for me to unpack. I could have easily snuggled up in front of a movie, but I’d heard there’s a pork Tomahawk I need to try at the hotel's Tyburn Kitchen.

Hilton Executive Bedroom

F&B: Open-plan Tyburn Market, serving around the clock from 6am until 1am, is a pitstop for fresh coffee, sandwiches, poke bowls and pastries, while sister restaurant Tyburn Kitchen is where the hotel’s full English breakfast buffets unfold, followed by a la carte lunch and dinner.

Grab-and-go at Tyburn Market

By night the venue is transformed with intimate soft lighting creating a cosy setting for its menu of elevated comfort food, from tiger prawn macaroni cheese to braised lamb. Among the signatures is the pork Tomahawk, a chunky chop served with rape seed oil mash, sage and bacon jam.

Comfort food at Tyburn Kitchen

With a glossy circular granite-topped bar at its heart, beautiful Bow Bar, nestled within the lobby, makes the perfect meeting point in this busy London ‘hood. It also makes its own gin, called 225, blended and bottled in the capital. Neighbouring Tyburn Kitchen Bar is a more casual affair that prides itself on its craft ales.

Bow Bar

Guests granted access can also enjoy complimentary breakfasts, snacks and adults-only ‘happy hour’ aperitifs in the popular Executive Lounge, a cocoon where Executive floor guests mingle.

Service and Facilities: I call reception more than once with different queries and the phone is answered within three rings every time. I am pleasantly surprised at this level of attentive guest service, which is increasingly rare in four-star properties amid the adoption of AI and automated bot services.

Facilities include a spacious fitness centre with plenty of treadmills to go around, and, for corporate travellers, there’s a business centre and meeting rooms.

Fitness centre

This impressive four-star hotel represents great value for money, offering comfort and all the mod cons in a convenient central London location within walking distance of London's best shopping streets and parks, and some well-connected Tube and train stations, making it reachable within 30 minutes of the airport. 

With the addition of suites sleeping up to six guests, it can accommodate families as well as individual corporate and leisure travellers, adding to its versatility and appeal.

Hilton London Metropole, 225 Edgware Road, London W2 1JU, United Kingdom, +44 20 7402 4141. Rooms cost from £314 (US$410) per night for two including breakfast. For more information, visit www.hilton.com/en/hotels/lonmetw-hilton-london-metropole 

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