Z Hotel Piccadilly

About Z Hotel Piccadilly

Z Hotel Piccadilly is at 2 Orange Street, in the block between Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, which is about as central as a London hotel room gets. It has 112 rooms and works on a straightforward compact-format model: the rooms are small, the beds and showers are good, and the money that would otherwise go on floor space goes into the location instead.

Rooms come in five grades. The Z Single and the Z Inside Double start from around sixty pounds; the Inside Double has no window, which suits some people and not others, and is worth understanding before booking. The Z Double from around seventy-five pounds is the usual choice, and the Z Queen at around a hundred gives noticeably more space. All rooms have air conditioning, en-suite showers, Samsung televisions with Sky channels, tea and coffee, and free Wi-Fi.

There is no restaurant, but the ground-floor cafe serves breakfast and coffee, and complimentary wine and cheese is put out in the evening - a small thing that guests mention consistently. Booking direct through the hotel's own site carries a ten per cent discount off the public rate.

The trade-off is space and quiet: this is a busy corner of the West End and the rooms are compact by any standard. What you get in return is thirty theatres, the National Gallery, Chinatown, Covent Garden and the South Bank all within a fifteen-minute walk, and no need to use the Tube at all during a short stay. For a theatre weekend it is one of the best-value central options in London.