London was a city of coaching inns and lodging houses, before the 19th century ushered in the railway network, and with it the hotel industry, to cater to the increasing visitor traffic. Its history is long and exciting. For example, London is the place in which a large part of Charles Dickens' works take place, such as "A Tale of Two Cities." It is the home of the Magna Carta, a 13th-century document decreeing that the Parliament should have some power over the king, ceremonially at least. There are millions of pages of written history that pertain to this amazing city in England; you can almost feel the old ghosts when you go there today.

London today has a wide range of hotels, from traditional grand giants like the Ritz and the Savoy, modern chains like the Four Seasons and Hilton, to townhouse hotels like the Darlington Hyde Park. The largest number of modern chain hotels is concentrated around Heathrow Airport.

The city boasts the largest hotel in the UK, the 3-star Royal National Hotel, with 1,630 bedrooms, in Bloomsbury. Paddington's Hilton London Metropole in Paddington is the largest 4-star hotel in the UK, with 1,058 guestrooms.

The Langham Hotel, which opened in 1865, was the largest in the city when it was built, as well as the first in the UK with hydraulic lifts. The first hotel in the city to provide bathrooms with every guestroom was the Savoy (1889). The most famous London hotel of all, the Ritz, opened in 1908.