A London room rate normally buys you the room, the bed linen and towels, a private bathroom, wi-fi and 20% VAT already included. It does not usually buy breakfast, parking, an early room, a late departure, laundry or anything from the minibar. There is no city tourist tax in London at present, so nothing should be added to your bill in the name of one.
Visitors from continental Europe often arrive expecting a small nightly tax collected at reception, and Americans often expect a resort or facility fee. Neither exists here. What London does instead is sell you a bare room at a competitive price and charge separately for almost everything else, which can add a surprising amount to a four-night stay if you say yes to all of it without thinking.
This page goes through the extras one by one, with the ones that are fixed by law, the ones that are fixed by the hotel, and the ones you can simply decline. For the rules on what a quoted price must contain and how to avoid fake listings, see our guide to booking safely in London. For the question of when to press the button, see when to book a London hotel.
What a London room rate does and does not cover
- Always included
- VAT at 20%; bed linen and towels; heating and hot water; normally wi-fi
- Never charged
- A tourist or city tax. London has none (September 2026)
- Usually extra
- Breakfast, parking, early check-in, late check-out, laundry, minibar
- Sometimes extra
- Luggage storage, a cot, a third bed, a room safe, faster wi-fi
- Driving to your hotel
- Congestion Charge £18 a day and ULEZ £12.50 a day, before any parking fee (2026 rates)
- Discretionary service charge
- Optional. It appears on restaurant and bar bills, not usually on the room rate
The two taxes, and the one that does not exist
UK VAT on hotel accommodation is charged at the standard rate of 20%, and UK businesses quote prices to consumers with it already inside. The figure you see is the figure you pay. You will sometimes see the VAT broken out on the final invoice, which is for accounting rather than an extra charge.
There is no separate overnight levy in London. In September 2026 the government announced that mayors and the leaders of strategic authorities will be handed the power to introduce an Overnight Visitor Levy, charged as a percentage of the accommodation cost rather than as a flat nightly fee. A bill has not yet been introduced, no rate has been set for London, and the Mayor has said he will consult boroughs and businesses first. Until that changes, a line on a London bill described as a city tax, a tourism tax or a municipal tax is something to query before you pay it.
Visitors also ask about reclaiming VAT on shopping when they leave. That scheme ended in Great Britain at the start of 2021 and has not returned: our page on tax-free shopping in the UK sets out what remains.
A "city tax" on a London booking is a question, not a fee. Because no visitor levy exists here, any charge using that name is either a mislabelled service fee or a sign that something is wrong with the booking. Ask the hotel what it is for, in writing, before you hand over a card.
Breakfast: the extra that costs the most
Breakfast is the single biggest optional charge in most London hotels, and the one most often bought without arithmetic. Budget chains and compact-room hotels sell it as an add-on. Mid-range and grand hotels may include it in some rates and not others, and the same hotel will quote you two prices for the same room for exactly that reason.
Before you take the breakfast rate, do three checks.
- Compare the two rates for the whole stay, not one night. Multiply the difference by the number of nights and by the number of people. For a family of four over four mornings, a modest-looking daily supplement becomes a substantial sum.
- Check what is actually served. "Breakfast included" can mean a cooked buffet, or a continental spread of bread, pastries, cereal and fruit, or a bag with a pastry and a coffee. Our guide to the full English breakfast explains what a proper cooked breakfast contains and where to find a good one.
- Check the serving hours, especially at weekends and on the morning of an early flight. A breakfast you paid for and left before is money gone.
The alternative is that almost every London street has a café, a bakery or a supermarket within a few minutes' walk, and London's café breakfasts are generally good and considerably cheaper than a hotel buffet. If you are staying in a bed and breakfast or guest house, breakfast is normally in the rate by definition, which is part of why they compare well on price.
The gap at each end of your stay
Check-in is usually in the afternoon and check-out in the morning, and the exact times are written on your confirmation rather than set by any rule. That leaves two awkward gaps: the hours between landing and being allowed into your room, and the hours between leaving your room and your flight home.
Hotels sell solutions to both. Guaranteed early check-in and late check-out are normally either a flat fee or a share of the nightly rate, and both are sold subject to availability, which means the hotel can take the money only if a room is free. Two free alternatives usually exist:
- Ask, politely, on the day. If the hotel is not full, an early room or an extra hour at the end is often given without charge. Asking at reception on arrival costs nothing; pre-paying for it in advance may not be necessary.
- Leave your bags. Most hotels with a staffed desk will hold luggage on your arrival and departure days at no charge. Smaller guest houses and hotels without 24-hour reception may not, and a few budget hotels charge per bag. Check before you plan your last day around it.
If your hotel will not hold bags, the stations will. Left-luggage counters run by the Excess Baggage Company are at nine London terminals: King's Cross, St Pancras, Paddington, Euston, Waterloo, Victoria, Liverpool Street, London Bridge and Charing Cross. The operator's own branch list gives the same hours at all nine, 07:00 to 23:00 seven days a week, and publishes prices when you book. Network Rail's station pages show Monday to Friday only, which is a gap in its data rather than a weekend closure. Victoria Coach Station runs its own store opposite the ticket office, open 08:00 to 22:00 Friday to Wednesday and 08:00 to 20:00 on Thursdays, with published prices per item: £2.00 for up to an hour, £5.00 for one to three hours, £7.50 for three to six hours, £10.00 for six to 24 hours and £6 for each further day (2026 prices). Our guide to left luggage in London covers the other options.
Parking is the charge that catches drivers out
If you are driving to your hotel, the parking space is the smallest part of the bill. Central London charges you for being there at all.
- The Congestion Charge is £18 a day if you pay in advance or on the day, rising to £21 if you pay by midnight on the third day afterwards. Charging hours are 07:00 to 18:00 on weekdays, and 12:00 to 18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays. Nothing is charged between Christmas Day and the New Year's Day bank holiday.
- The Ultra Low Emission Zone costs £12.50 a day for a vehicle that does not meet the emissions standard. It covers every London borough, 24 hours a day, every day except Christmas Day, and the charging day runs from midnight to midnight, so a late-night arrival across midnight is two charges. Non-UK vehicles must be registered with TfL even if they do meet the standard.
- The penalty for either is £180, halved to £90 if you pay within 14 days, and it follows foreign-registered vehicles too.
A hotel that advertises parking will usually charge a nightly rate for the space on top of all that, and some sell a space they do not own, in a nearby public car park. Hire cars complicate it further, because hire companies normally pass on charges and penalties with an administration fee. Our guides to the Congestion Charge and ULEZ and to parking in London have the detail. For almost every visitor staying centrally, the honest answer is not to bring a car.
Wi-fi, phone calls and keeping your devices alive
Wi-fi is included in most London hotels, but not in all of them, and one of the biggest budget chains is the exception. Travelodge gives you 30 minutes free in every 24 hours and then charges: £3.50 for a day, £7 for two, £15 for a week (September 2026), unless your room type includes the premium service. Premier Inn, ibis and the compact chains include it. Two other things are worth checking. Some hotels offer a free basic tier and sell a faster one, which matters only if you plan to work or stream. And in older buildings the signal can be weak at the top of the house, which is where the cheapest rooms often are.
Room telephones are expensive everywhere and almost never worth using. The bigger trap for European visitors is mobile data: the EU's roam-like-at-home rules do not cover the United Kingdom, so charges depend entirely on your own operator's UK tariff. Check it before you travel, or read our guide to UK SIM cards and eSIMs.
Bring the right plug. UK sockets take the three-pin BS 1363 plug and the supply is 230 volts at 50 hertz. Hotels will often lend an adapter at reception, but not always, and never on a busy morning. Our page on plugs, adapters and voltage explains what to pack.
Water, the kettle and the minibar
London tap water is safe to drink, and every hotel room has a tap. Bottled water placed on the desk may be free, may be charged, and is often charged at a price nobody would pay in a shop. If there is no card or label saying it is complimentary, assume it is not.
Most British hotel rooms above the very cheapest include a kettle with tea, coffee, sugar and small milk pots, at no charge and refilled daily. Compact-room hotels often leave the kettle out of the room and put a free hot-drinks machine in the lobby instead. Minibars are increasingly rare outside the grand hotels; where one exists, assume everything in it is charged and that some are sensor-operated, so moving a bottle can bill you for it.
Carrying a refillable bottle is the simplest saving of the trip. Our page on tap water and refill points lists where to fill it around the city.
Service charges in the hotel's own bar and restaurant
The room rate does not carry a service charge, but a meal or a drink in the hotel often does. A service charge is an amount added to the bill before it reaches you, and it is voluntary only where the business makes clear that there is no obligation to pay it. In London restaurants an added figure of around 12.5% is common practice rather than any legal rule, and the menu or the bill should say what the policy is.
The law here changed on 1 October 2024. Under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, what a customer adds for service now has to reach the staff in full, allocated fairly under a statutory code, rather than being kept or reduced by the business. That is a good reason to leave a discretionary charge in place if the service was good. It is not a reason to pay one twice: if a service charge is already on the bill, an additional tip is not expected. Our guide to tipping in London covers who to tip and how much.
Children, cots and the third person in the room
British hotel rooms are priced by room, not by person, but that stops being true as soon as you exceed the beds. A cot is often free for a baby and sometimes not; a rollaway bed or sofa bed for an older child usually carries a nightly charge; and a "double room" in a converted Victorian house frequently cannot take a third bed at all, whatever the booking form allows you to select.
Three practical points. Say the ages of your children when you book, because a hotel's definition of a child can be anything up to 12, 16 or 18 and it changes the price. Ask whether breakfast is included for children when it is included for adults. And if your party is four or more, price two rooms and an apartment against each other before you decide: our guide to aparthotels and serviced apartments explains when a kitchen and a second bedroom win. Families travelling with a baby will find more in our page on London with a baby.
Laundry, pressing and the things you forgot
Hotel laundry in London is priced per item and is expensive in every category of hotel. On a trip of a week or more, plan around it: launderettes and service washes are covered in our guide to doing laundry in London.
Small items vary by hotel. An iron, a hairdryer and a safe are normally free where they exist, though in compact rooms the iron lives at reception and a few hotels charge nightly for the safe. Toothbrushes, razors and chargers sold at reception cost several times what a chemist charges two streets away.
Checking out without an argument
Read the bill at the desk rather than in the taxi. The items worth a second look are breakfasts you did not eat, minibar charges, telephone or wi-fi upgrades you did not order, car park nights and any charge you do not recognise by name. Questions asked at the desk are settled in two minutes; the same question by email three weeks later can take a month.
Keep the final invoice until the charge has settled on your statement. Card pre-authorisations taken at check-in are released rather than refunded, and the timing depends on your bank rather than the hotel, which is worth knowing before you assume you have been charged twice. Our page on money, cards and contactless explains how payments work here, and budget hotels in London lists what those rates leave out.
Three declines cover most of the saving. Say no to hotel breakfast, no to bottled water you did not ask for and no to guaranteed early check-in, and on a four-night stay for two people you will usually have saved more than any amount of price-comparison between similar hotels.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a tourist tax on hotels in London?
No. London has no overnight visitor levy at present. The government announced in September 2026 that mayors will be given the power to introduce one, charged as a percentage of the accommodation cost, but legislation has not yet been introduced and no rate or start date has been set for London.
Is VAT included in London hotel prices?
Yes. UK VAT on accommodation is charged at the standard rate of 20% and consumer prices are quoted with it included, so the figure you are shown is the figure you pay. Seeing VAT itemised on the final invoice does not mean it has been added on top.
Do London hotels charge for luggage storage?
Most hotels with a staffed reception store bags free on your arrival and departure days. Some budget and compact-room hotels charge per bag, and small guest houses without a permanent desk may not offer it at all. If yours does not, the main railway termini and Victoria Coach Station both have left-luggage counters.
Is breakfast included in a London hotel?
Usually not in the basic rate. Budget chains sell it separately, mid-range hotels often quote a room-only rate and a breakfast rate for the same room, and a bed and breakfast or guest house includes it by definition. Compare the two rates across the whole stay and the whole party before deciding.
How much does it cost to drive to a central London hotel?
Before parking, £18 a day for the Congestion Charge on weekdays from 07:00 to 18:00 and at weekends from 12:00 to 18:00, plus £12.50 a day for the ULEZ if your vehicle does not meet the emissions standard. The penalty for missing either is £180, reduced to £90 within 14 days. Hotel parking is charged on top.
Do I have to pay the service charge on a hotel restaurant bill?
A discretionary service charge is optional, and the menu or bill should say so. Since October 2024 employers must pass all tips and service charges on to staff without deductions, so leaving it in place does reach the people who served you. If it has already been added, a further tip is not expected.
Sources
- GOV.UK - Tax on shopping and services (VAT rates) (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Local leaders handed powers to drive investment in communities (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Overnight Visitor Levy in England: consultation (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Congestion Charge (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Ultra Low Emission Zone (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Victoria Coach Station facilities and left luggage (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Tips at work (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Distributing tips fairly: statutory code of practice (checked September 2026)