The Londoner

London

The Londoner is unique. And fabulous. 

New 5* London hotels always make a splash, some even shift the landscape beneath them. The Londoner, iceberg-like in both scale and structure, does both. Literally, with six stories burrowed below Leicester Square, it stands with the aplomb of the West End premières so famed in its neighbourhood. Self-styled as the world’s first “super-boutique”, it has the gall to invent a category, and, infuriatingly for its rivals, it rather pulls it off.

We arrived for just one night, my daughter and I, after a week exiled in a questionable Airbnb where she was attending Italia Conti. This was our reward: one night of five-star indulgence, a show, and a soft landing before heading home.

Location is the first card The Londoner plays, and it is a trump (but not Trump). The Mayfair luxury rivals have tradition, The Savoy has the history and the Thames, but Leicester Square is London’s unapologetic pulse. Soho, Covent Garden, the National Gallery, Piccadilly Circus, all within arm’s reach, all yours. Yet the moment you step inside, the carnival outside dissolves. The design hushes the roar; chaos evaporates as the doorman ushers you inside.

Beneath ground, the drama deepens. With six floors hidden below pavement level, the hotel boasts London’s deepest habitable basement. Down there lie ballrooms, cinemas, a gym unlike any hotel gym I have encountered, and The Retreat, a spa so blissfully detached it feels like apostasy to re-emerge. 

Our suite was ready early, upgraded without fuss. Panelled walls, hidden storage, blush-pink chaise, floor-to-ceiling windows; a lighting system that worked (rare enough to warrant applause). 

A German-twin configuration of the bed kept an appropriate peace between me and my daughter, and coat-hangers were present in profusion (a constant bugbear of mine) so a small but decisive victory in my book. The bathroom was another story altogether: gleaming green tiles, a shower with the conviction of a tropical storm, and the Toto automatic toilet, rising to attention like a butler (I won’t regale you with full, graphic details but automatic seat raising and lowering (and heating) were only the begins of the ‘service’). Bathroom shelf space equally impressive, alongside an array of hotel luxury bathroom products, capacious enough for the cargo of a 16-year-old young lady’s toiletries.

Public spaces fizz. The Stage, the lobby bar by any other name, is champagne-saturated and glossy, a cabaret of live music and laughter. Upstairs, 8 at The Londoner is a rooftop izakaya with retractable roof and central firepit; part Zen, part theatre. 

The Residence, meanwhile, is a secret world for guests alone: three lounges, softly lit, where pastries and nibbles appear unbidden, and the Whisky Room beckons. I spent a half-hour in the Y Bar, Andrew Rae’s illustrations ethereally glowing through dark walls, with a perfectly crafted Negroni while my daughter conquered her hair upstairs.

The staff are everywhere, young, sharp, quietly confident. You are attended without being smothered, anticipated without being cornered. It is service as theatre: precise, invisible, uncanny.

It costs, of course. All true luxury does. But The Londoner justifies itself not only with design and detail, but with something rarer: nerve. To plant your flag in Leicester Square, to dig six floors beneath it, to declare yourself a “super-boutique”. This is not just hospitality, it is bravado. And yet, against the odds, it is bravado redeemed and uncannily precise; the soul of an intimate townhouse, magnified to metropolitan scale

In the end, The Londoner’s  is, for now at least, the freshest jewel in the capital’s crown: Proof that luxury in the centre of London’s Theatreland can be modern, playful, laced with innovative detail, and still disarmingly personal. One departs reluctantly, promising oneself another curtain call.

“London’s first Super-Boutique hotel has the gall to invent its category, and, infuriatingly for its rivals, it rather pulls it off.”