The Sumner Hotel

My favourite hotel in London. Small boutique hotel with beautiful home like décor. Reception and service is excellent and very friendly. Rooms are beautiful and large. Some rooms can let noise in but thats true most hotels. Breakfast is hit or miss but I usually have good luck and enjoy a large choice. Minibars are quite good with reasonable prices.

Visited: January 25 — January 31, 2011
Having been a fan of the British comedy, «Fawlty Towers,» and never been to England before, I was almost expecting something like that fictional hotel for my first stay.
Was I mistaken.
This wonderful bed and breakfast (having won the Best Bed and Breakfast in London Award recently), located on Berkeley Street, is top-​notch and «on top of their game.»
The staff and owners are very friendly and eager to help you make your stay as pleasant as possible. If there is any problem with your room, whether the feel of it, location or something mechanical, they will work to fix it quickly!
My sleeping/​living area was spacious and clean. The bathroom was just as spacious as well (and for the shower — wow — a huge shower for a hotel room.) Although I was on the first floor and on street level, I would have enjoyed to have my shades open, but people can look right in.
The outlets are great — plenty of them! There is even one for the US.
The continental breakfast is another special treat! They don’t want you going hungry in the mornings when you’re leaving for your tours and sight-​seeing. There is a huge breakfast room in the basement — spacious, good lighting, a helpful and friendly hostess… and if you’re lucky (again), your table might be cleared by one of the owners — I love that ‘hands-​on” feeling!
One bit of advice. Although there is an elevator to the floors — the elevator is in-​between floors — so it’s best to take the lift to the higher floor and walk down with your luggage.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with my stay. However, I would most likely request a higher floor just so I can open my shades to look out.

An amazing posh mini-​hotel located in one of the best areas of London far enough from the busy riff-​raff of Oxford Street and Edgware Road but close to several major bus lines and the Circle Line’s Marble Arch underground station. This is not a large hotel, but the rooms are clean and appointed well enough to make you forget this former townhouse is just a bed & breakfast in the middle of what is bed & breakfast row. The Savoy is open if you want to blow £450/​night.
All the rooms are slightly different, and the website doesn’t accurately depict each room type – not their fault, but don’t expect too much. I originally booked a deluxe room on the second floor. I entered a room where the furniture was nearly all white and smelled like wet paint. The antique armoire, while a nice touch, had one wooden hanging bar with no shelves or drawers – not a good thing. I called downstairs and switched to a much better third floor room (room 203) called an «executive room» that had nicer, more corporate styled furniture. I doubt any of the bathrooms have tubs, only smallish shower stalls.
If you’re a light sleeper, you might want to book a top-​floor room so that you won’t hear your neighbors above you or people walking up & down the stairs. This hotel is creaky but no noisier than what I’d expect from similar rehabbed old townhouses. I happened to take my earplugs along for the flight over, but I ended up using them to sleep through whatever footsteps I heard above.
If you’re an American reading this, you’ll want to understand bedding terms in ye olde B&B hotels: Small hotels rarely follow naming/​sizing conventions you’re used to in the States. If you ask for a King Double, you’ll probably get a room with two twin-​sized mattresses pushed together to form one big bed. This has an undesired side effect – once the sheets are put on, one mattress might be slightly lower than the other. It’s one of those things you’ll have to see to understand.
Prepare yourself: One of the oddest things is that the lift doesn’t stop at the floors you’d expect. You’ll see what I mean once you’re there. My room was 203, yet the closest the elevator stopped was «3″ – then I had to walk down half a flight of steps to get to the floor.
As for the breakfast, it was nice. Some of the menu items changed from day to day to keep selections interesting. My fave items: fresh Boursin and Brie cheeses that were refreshed daily. Getting Boursin cheese in the morning is like getting caviar for dinner.
The lobby area in the front is compact and lovely. Remember that the Sumner Hotel is not a fancy business hotel with all the trappings you’d expect from corporate lodging. This is a superb B&B with just enough fancy touches to make your stay relaxing without gouging your billfold.
Extremely friendly employees were pleasant and unpretentious. I’d like to thank all the employees for being so friendly and accommodating during my stay. Beata, Peter N., Lukas R. and Mark D. made my first trip overseas terrific.

Nice little boutique hotel in the Mayfair district near Marble Arch. Actually a restored Georgian townhouse with twenty or so rooms. Staff was very friendly and accommodating.
Our room faced the street, nicely decorated and furnished. Surprising amount of storage for a small boutique hotel room. Free wifi was included, something to consider if you travel here, as a lot of places charge big bucks for it. The wifi was often slow and sporadic, however; TV reception was also spotty, which management says is typical for the area.
Nice communal sitting room on the ground floor with a bunch of travel books, although we spent so much time sightseeing that we didn’t spend much time here. Free cooked breakfast every morning is a big plus.
Well-​located a few blocks from Hyde Park and the Marble Arch Tube stop, which will take you pretty much anywhere in London. For the price, you can’t do much better than this.

Nice hotel, with all the conveniences you need. A US plug, flat screen tv, air-​conditioning, free wifi, nice bathroom, decent bed, good staff, and decent breakfast in the morning. Also located near convenient transport — bus and tube. Close to tons of shopping and nearby attractions are really close. Loved it! All for about 134 pounds.

We stayed here 1 wk while in London and found it to be a bargain. It’s located in what we found later, to be the more «Arab» district of North London, about 4 blocks from the Marble Arch Tube line. It’s mostly residential, with a great brightly painted red colored pub on the corner. It’s a low-​key, quiet kind of place with a front room which has one computer with internet access and 2 couches and a couple of chairs, travel books and a table. The «front desk» is a tiny reception desk for one. The elevators took us up 3 flights to our rooms on the top floor. We had a nice room with tiny desk and bathroom with shower/​toilet/​sink and closet. Very simplistic. The stairway is long, narrow and winding and reminds you of those old London apartments.
A filling daily buffet breakfast came with our stay. You could chose from silky scrambled eggs, toast, bangers, muffins, ham, cereal, fruits, coffee, juice, milk, etc. There are 2 dining areas, the smaller room has two 4-​person, and one 2-​person tables, the larger inside room has a couple of smaller tables and a larger communal table to mingle with other travelers.
In the neighborhood, we came across a deli filled will Arab food fares such as balakava, cookies, etc. There were a couple of restaurants in the neighborhood, including East Indian and Chinese. But, these alley ways also house places where Arab-​men only publicly convene, so probably not a good idea for a lone female to go wandering as it’s not culturally acceptable.

This is a top quality small boutique hotel which is in an excellent location. It is only a 2 min walk to Oxford Street and Marble Arch and a 5 min walk into Hyde Park.
The décor is really tasteful and modern and we were really impressed with the lounge area which had lots of lovely reading material and more importantly, a PC for guest use which was free of charge to surf the web. We had drinks in the lounge one evening and although they were a little pricey, it was a lovely atmosphere.
We had an executive king sized room which was immaculate, with high quality fittings and fixtures and plenty of space. It overlooked the street but wasn’t noisy at all and it was nice to be able to open the windows. We didn’t really need specific help from staff but we found them pleasant at all times. When we asked to borrow an ironing board — it was no trouble at all.
Although we would recommend this hotel and would stay again, it did have some small down sides for us. Firstly, there were no tea and coffee making facilities in the room which I would expect from a 4 star hotel. We had to pay £3.60 for tea for two with biscuits! Also, I like to have a bath and robe in a hotel room, especially after a hard day’s sight seeing in London but unfortunately, we had neither. The shower room was like new and very clean but quite small.
As for the breakfast, it was more continental than traditional English. The first day, there was no bacon at all and the sausage was like a bratwerst! On day two, we did have bacon but no sausage. Toast wasn’t readily available on the buffet but we did get some when we asked. Despite these small niggles, we thorougly enjoyed our stay.

I love The Sumner. I’ve stayed there three times in the past 15 months: it’s a real find. It has a great location (3 blocks from the Marble Arch tube station), in a convenient but quiet neighborhood. The hotel was opened in 2006 in restored townhomes, and has about 22 rooms. The common areas and rooms are nicely decorated with modern furnishings (flat screen TVs in the rooms). There is a computer available to guests in the sitting room, and there is reliable Internet access in all guestrooms. The room rate (very reasonable for London) includes a good buffet breakfast. Most importantly, the staff at The Sumner are always pleasant and helpful. You won’t go wrong at The Sumner! I will definitely be back.