How hard can booking a hotel in London for a weekend be?

I have spent spare moments, some actually quite lengthy moments, for the best part of 10 days trying to find a hotel in London for 2 nights near a concert venue for which a friend has sorted us tickets.  

Until we gave up the house in London in late 2022 hotels did not feature for such events and I suspect when this task was delegated to me, my friend had rather more idea of quite what a stressor this was going to be. Whilst I would have said I book hotels regularly closer examination suggests this is all very familiar.  I booked us a hotel in Whitby last year, Air BnBs in Paris and Bruges the year before but other than those I book (the same hotel) for when S & I need to stay over for work.  S did the bookings in France for the Cars and Cathedrals tour and that was very much with certain criteria in mind, primarily convenience.  We are creatures of habit,  so if we have an early flight out of Stansted it will be the Radisson Blu, we are regulars on a particular campsite (chalet not tent) in the South of France and we have preferred hotels for skiing.  For the most part that just leaves long week end European city breaks and if flying we will usually do a package.  We have work to get back to and I like to have someone else responsible for aiding this.  

All in all I am a connoisseur of lazy girl travel/staying away from home.  As it (eventually) turned out this was precisely how the problem (before I digressed) was solved.

So when I started this marathon task I had a particular hotel in mind that I had stayed at before, 2 or 3 few years ago, with a different friend who regularly stays with this chain, has multiple membership points and likes a swim first thing which is fine by me as I can get a head start on breakfast.  She regards breakfast as an inconvenient refuelling stop to be done pretty much on hoof.  When the opportunity arises (and granted yoghurts/bananas/oats are, more frequently than not, eaten at my desk) I regard it as a leisurely pursuit to be savoured often alongside the papers, though sometimes those are a little more stressful than they used to be.

Back in the day, when you had a hotel in mind you would just ring up, ask for a twin room and assume you were getting standard going rate.  Now there are numerous websites, umpteen comparisons some with taxes included, some not, some with double beds, some king beds, some queen beds, some super king beds, some family rooms and a very few with twin beds.  Some are pay now, some pay later, some pay at venue, some fully refundable, some insurable, some refundable until so many days before hand, some non refundable, some with breakfast, some without, some with breakfast that can be purchased for a further sum.  Some have additional supplements for spa, pool, steam room/sauna, gym facilities, some don’t and many don’t have those facilities at all.  Same applies for late check outs.  Some have mini bars, some have tea and coffee facilities, some have coffee machines.  Some have specific pricing for members.  Some don’t have windows - now I get that is an option on cruise ships but really, in a hotel, didn’t that use to be called a cupboard?

The choice is bewildering and dynamic pricing is clearly very much a thing for the London hospitality, or at least hotel, industry - the first night for many hotels was more than twice the price for the second.  

My initial choice was ruled out on a couple of sites due to either lack of availability on that site or price.  The search continued.  Many in our preferred locality were fully booked.  Popular concert possibly or could simply be down to the number of rooms released on any particular site I was looking at from time to time.  Some were just incredibly expensive even before add ons and I have no idea how some got to their totals from the room price they were headlining with.  

I sent half a dozen options through to my friend who told me all were fine.  As I said I suspect she was aware this was easier said than done.  She is a little less picky than me, a little more price sensitive but she does require a room with a window.  When I reviewed them they clearly were not fine and I can only assume we had both been viewing them from a stance approaching desperation.

S suggested the one I had thought about in the first place.  I rolled my eyes.

As it happened I did stumble across a premium twin room with a window and a mini bar for that very hotel a day or so later.  First night is more than twice the price of the second.  I couldn’t care less about the mini bar but it does mean there will be a fridge which might be handy.  Breakfast came out £10 each which is slightly odd as it was being sold as an add on to different options at £17.50.  Now while S and I are hotel breakfast people I find it is a divisive point, buffets and price seeming to be the two main points of contention.  In this instance I just booked it - getting a coffee and croissant in London for £10 is starting to become a challenge and one can only spend so much time of a weekend searching for Wetherspoons!

Maybe I should have just rung up but then again when I first searched this room was not featuring on their site.  Turns out booking a hotel in London can be a lot harder than one might think or maybe I am overthinking it.