Hotels in Chichester

Chichester rewards picking a base to suit what you have come for rather than defaulting to the first hotel you find. Inside the city walls, North Street and South Street put you within walking distance of the cathedral, Pallant House Gallery and the Festival Theatre, which matters if you are here for an evening performance or do not want to rely on a car; this is also where the widest choice of boutique hotels and period guest houses sits, many in listed Georgian townhouses. A short drive south, the harbour villages of Bosham and Itchenor offer a quieter, waterside alternative geared around sailing and coastal walking rather than city-centre nightlife, with a small number of longer-established hotels rather than a wide spread of options.

If Goodwood is the reason for your visit, whether for the Festival of Speed, the Revival or the racecourse, staying north of the city around East Lavant, Singleton or the estate itself cuts out a daily drive through town, though rooms in this pocket book up months ahead of the big events and prices rise sharply during them. Families heading for the beach tend to look further south again, towards Selsey and West Wittering, where the accommodation is more geared towards self-catering and holiday parks than hotels, though a handful of good country inns sit within easy reach of the sand.

Across all these areas, expect a genuine mix of property types rather than a run of chain hotels: converted townhouses, working farms with rooms attached to a restaurant, cathedral-run guest accommodation and a couple of small independent hotels are all more typical of Chichester than large branded stays, and booking direct with the smaller properties often secures a better room than going through a third-party site. Given the seasonal pull of the theatre in summer and Goodwood's events calendar, it is worth checking those dates before you book, since both push prices and availability across the whole city, not just the properties closest to the action.