The Britannia International Hotel in London’s Canary Wharf has been in the news
The press has made quite a thing in the summer of 2025 about asylum seekers being housed in what they describe as one of the plushest hotels in London, the Britannia International in Canary Wharf.
The Sun described it as a ‘flash financial district hotel’, noting that it offers ‘two restaurants and bars’, making it ‘the perfect base for a city break. When open to the public a standard room had cost as much as £425 a night’.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told The Sun: “This is one of the most luxurious hotels people can only dream of staying in, right in the heart of London’s financial centre.”
A resident living five minutes away called Mary, 58, said of asylum seekers staying in the hotel when speaking to The Sun: “This used to be the best place in the world but it’s gone to the dogs.”
Well, Canary Wharf is on the Isle of Dogs, so what did she expect?
The hotel has been the scene of anti-migrant demonstrations in July and August of 2025, requiring a heavy police attendance. Counter-protesters have also been present. Yesterday there were around 100 protesters outside the hotel, according to the MyLondon website.
I feel sorry for any asylum seeker staying in a Britannia Hotel. They have suffered enough already, and hearing people chant about their hatred for you right outside your window must be very chilling.
Britannia has been voted by consumer champion Which? The UK’s worst hotel chain for 11 years in a row, most recently scoring an ‘abysmal’ overall customer satisfaction rating, with those surveyed giving it just one star (out of five) for bedrooms, bathrooms and the quality of the wifi. The highest Britannia scored in the remaining seven categories, including cleanliness, value for money and customer service, was two stars. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Britannia’s hotels don’t score highly on sites like TripAdvisor either.
Before the Canary Wharf hotel kerfuffle, Byline Times spoke to two asylum seekers who had lived in a Britannia hotel in Manchester for months and they described living in fear of harassment, dirty rooms, and poor conditions. Byline Times also saw videos of uncleared food, clothes littering corridors and badly leaking ceilings.
I have had the misfortune of staying in Britannia Hotels on a few occasions, either booked in without my knowledge by a tourist board or press office, or when there has been no other option.
There was no option when I stayed in Britannia International Hotel in Canary Wharf little over a year ago. I was in London that evening and without accommodation, and mistakenly thought that if I left it until very late I could snap up an unsold room at a bargain price.
You would think that in a city as vast as London there would be plenty of choice, but to my surprise on this night there wasn’t. Every hotel but one in London and Kent had been sold on the Travelodge and Premier Inn websites, for example, something I had never seen before. Earlier in the day I had seen rooms offered by these very unexceptional chains for £150 to £250, which seemed exorbitant for what you get.
Virtually the only hotel left I could find in London that wasn’t clearly a health hazard or hugely expensive was the Britannia, with two rooms left at £89 each. I snapped one up, especially as the online descriptions made out that the hotel was rather plush. I optimistically wondered whether this Britannia hotel was bucking the low quality trend, was an exception to the rule. The street it is in, Marsh Wall, is lined with more expensive, much better quality hotels, which helps give an impression that the Britannia is a lot better than it really is.
When I arrived and parked my car in its grim car park – full of junk and debris and cars parked thoughtlessly to ensure that less cars could park – I began to cotton on that this hotel was going to be no Ritz or Savoy. Like many hotels, they’d made an effort to make the public areas look a lot better than the bedrooms (in a kitch and faux-majestic sort of way), but it still felt rather depressing despite the attempt to spice up the interior design with ‘luxury’ features like plastic plants.
At reception there was a long, painfully slow-moving queue to check in. People were tired and getting impatient and angry. I felt sorry for the staff having to work in this environment. Unsurprisingly, Britannia doesn’t do that well in online reviews by employees of the company. And an UnHerd article about Britannia notes that some staff at Britannia’s sister company, Pontins, said they had been sacked by text message.
With it being really late now and the combination of swirly carpets, ill-matching furniture, ugly signs and simply the grimmest atmosphere, I was vowing to myself to never wait until the last moment to book a hotel again.
Things you often take for granted at hotels, like free wifi and parking, are certainly not free here. Parking from 6pm to 9am was £15, then £3 an hour. The Booking.com website stated that wifi was free, yet didn’t mention that this was in public areas only. If you wanted wifi in your room, it was £7 per device per day.
Needless to say, breakfast was not included, but from one look at a couple of the dishes I saw in the restaurant I considered that a godsend. Checkout was at an unseemly 10am, and in the unlikely event you wanted to stay longer, that would cost an extra £10 per hour.
I felt I was in The Shining as I traipsed along the corridors to my room, which boasted a garish blue patterned carpet and walls that were either bright orange, blue or yellow. It was
just a complete car crash of a hotel.
I had been given a little windowless cell-like room with really loud aircon rattling throughout the night that was uncomfortably chilly. Lying there, unable to sleep, I speculated whether it was spreading Legionnaires’ disease. When I turned off the air conditioning the room became far too hot after a few minutes. The controls of course didn’t work, so those were my only climate control options.
The two single beds were augmented by an ugly wardrobe and less than stylish glass and metal table and side table. However the room was generally clean apart from the odd grubby area on the walls and ceiling. There was one luxury, a kettle – but it was far too big for the basin so I ended up spilling water everywhere, trying to get it out of the sink when it was filled.
It’s sad that there’s this hotel chain, which going by its long track record of widespread terrible reviews, clearly despises the paying public – and its staff arguably – so much. Britannia owns more than 60 hotels around the country, and tragically many of them are listed, with impressive histories, and in prime locations. Wouldn’t it be nice if this was a hotel chain interested in restoring these buildings to their former glory?
If you have the misfortune to stay in one I urge you to check the safety features it has at the start of your visit. In the last nine years there have been fires at Britannia hotels in Brighton, Aberdeen, Manchester and Torquay – the latter wasn’t Fawlty Towers, by the way.
Britannia Hotels is owned by hotel tycoon Alex Langsam, 87. According to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, he is estimated to be worth £410m. In 2013 he lost a legal battle linked to his move to avoid paying tax in the UK. The Manchester Evening News reported at the time that in delivering his verdict Lord Justice Longmore said “At first sight, Mr Langsam’s claim is highly unusual, if not unprecedented. He is an astute businessman who has lived most of his life in the United Kingdom, yet he is anxious to rely on his father’s domicile of origin which was Austrian and thus himself qualify for the status of a ‘non-domicile’ as his father’s dependent with all the tax advantages that go with that status.”
Needless to say, he lost the case.
I don’t think I could go to bed happy being so rich yet caring so little about my hotels, staff and customers. I certainly couldn’t go to bed happy if it was one of the Britannia hotels I have had to stay in.