The catch at Sea Containers London

The photographs are of the Thames through wall-to-wall glass. The hotel's own website files the Standard, Superior, Superior Double Double, Superior Patio, Studio and One Bedroom Suite as city view: they look out over the skyline, and a Superior can catch the river at an angle, as one of the hotel's own photographs shows, but none of them faces it. The first category above the water is the Riverview Deluxe, and for 9 to 11 February 2027 the prepaid Plan Ahead rate was 269 pounds a night for a Standard and 369 for a Riverview Deluxe, VAT included, room only; for 20 to 22 April 2027 it was 379 against 479. The river is a 100 pound line item whichever week you pick.

The Standard is also the smallest room in the house at 29 square metres with a queen bed and a shower, and guests report the cheapest city-facing rooms as small and dark for a London rate. The Riverview Deluxe is 32 square metres with a king bed, so the premium buys three square metres, a bigger bed and the reason you chose the building.

The hotel's FAQ says it plainly: no swimming pool. The spa's own FAQ adds no sauna and no jacuzzi either. What agua spa has is treatment rooms, a lounge with loungers, and same-sex steam rooms inside the changing rooms, with the gym open 24 hours to residents. Steam room use is included in every stay, which is the whole of the free wellness offer; the 85 pound Spa Access Experience in the spa's own FAQ is what non-residents pay, on a weekday, for two hours of the same steam rooms and gym. Treatments run from 11.15am on weekdays, 10.45am on Saturdays and 10.15am on Sundays, with a full charge for cancellations inside 24 hours. If a London stay to you includes a swim, this building cannot give you one.

This is a 1970s office block turned hotel, with 354 rooms including 57 suites, and recent guests report two things in the same breath: walls that carry the room next door and an air-conditioning unit that hums through the night. Both are the building, not the housekeeping. Around that sit two bars that are destinations in their own right. Lyaness runs to midnight from Monday to Thursday and to 1am on Friday and Saturday, with walk-ins taken subject to availability; 12th Knot on the roof runs to 12.30am Thursday to Saturday. Neither is a residents' bar, so the lifts and corridors carry the evening trade home after you have gone to bed.

The hotel FAQ lists a 5 percent discretionary accommodation service charge added at checkout, which on a 369 pound Riverview Deluxe is another 18 pounds a night, and a 100 pound per night credit card hold for incidentals. Breakfast is not in the room-only rates: for February the Plan Ahead with Breakfast rate was 50 pounds a night above room only for two people, so budget 25 pounds a head, and Gordon Ramsay's own September 2026 breakfast menu prices a Full English at 20 pounds with a discretionary 15 percent service charge on top. A rollaway bed is 50 pounds. Parking under the building is 45 pounds per 24 hours Sunday to Thursday and 49.99 Friday to Sunday, subject to availability on the day, with three EV chargers that need advance notice. Dogs of 20lb or less carry a 100 pound deposit and are allowed in the restaurant and The Den only, and smoking in a room is a 350 pound fine.

The idea is dinner, drinks, a film and a spa hour without ordering a car, and it works, but only on the right night. Curzon Sea Containers, the 56-seat screening room, is open to the public and hotel guests on Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays only, and neither its own site nor the hotel's cinema page publishes a price, resident or otherwise; the only rooms that include tickets are the four Cabin Suites, from 869 pounds a night in February. 12th Knot publishes hours for Tuesday to Saturday only, its terrace closes at 10pm for licensing and cannot be booked, and its own page lists three September 2026 dates on which it closes for private events. Gordon Ramsay at Sea Containers stops dinner at 9pm from Sunday to Tuesday and 10pm from Wednesday to Saturday, and the spa's treatment day ends at 7.30pm on weekdays.