Covent Garden Hotel, London, United Kingdom

TI reviewer Rebecca Stumpf:
Confident, theatrical and winsome, the Covent Garden Hotel is a layer cake boutique hotel whose quality ingredients come from the vibrant neighbourhood of which it is a part – London’s theatre land and the former French district.

The facilities

Once a French hospital, the owners and designers Tim and Kit Kemp have converted the former wards into a sleek boutique hotel. Richly papered halls lead to rooms that have a romantic garret quality (especially those with large windows overlooking the area’s rooftops). The boutique hotel also has flair, from the curtains that part in front of the check-in desk to the marble staircase leading up to the first floor drawing room. Indeed, sometimes the Kemps are a little too good at visually satisfying our whims, leaving one with a mean longing for any display of awkwardness. Of course, at this location and price it’s well that the Covent Garden Hotel is at the top of her game – the clientele demand it.

And when you’re ready to see and be seen? There’s the ground floor Brasserie Max and the neighbourhood itself, with its peppering of French patisseries, boutique shopping and of course some of the best theatre in the world.

The rooms

Kit Kemp’s incredible eye for tapestry and texture shows in all her boutique hotels, and the obsessive attention to the interplay of these mediums gives the Covent Garden Hotel a particular sense of artistry. Also at play in this boutique hotel’s 58 rooms are more quiet features, such as Kit’s signature curtained bed heads, the laid-back blend of antique and modern furniture with the occasional quirky spin, and functional bathrooms of granite and mahogany.