Britannia International Hotel

The Britannia International Hotel is a large hotel with 530 rooms and many of the rooms, particularly on the higher floors, have lovely views.

Guest rooms include single, double, twin and family rooms as well larger suites. All rooms have televisions, tea and coffee making facilities and en-suite bathrooms.

There are also some wheelchair-accessible rooms available.

Wi-Fi wireless internet access is free in public areas and in the rooms you get two 20-minute free Wi-Fi sessions per day, or you can pay £7 for 24 hours unlimited access.

Like other Britannia hotels, it feels tired and in need of a major renovation. The decor looks old fashioned, which may make sense if the hotel was in a centuries-old historic building but it looks out of place in a concrete and glass building that was opened only in the 1990s.

The hotel looks quite nice from the street and the reception and bar areas do seem fancier than what you would normally find in a hotel in this price range. However, it is the rooms where you will spend most of your time and here the colours and decor would have looked dated even 40 years ago.

It is difficult to grasp how this hotel can look so dated. The hotel decor may have looked good in the 1970s but would have been hopelessly out of date by the early 80s. The thing is, that this hotel was not opened until 1992 so even with no renovation since opening, it simply shouldn’t look this bad.

It seems like their idea was to make the hotel look posh by adding flashy gold fittings, moulded ceilings and chandeliers but it just comes across looking cheap and tacky. Any attempt at refurbishment seems to have been done in a shoddy manner, in some cases resorting to using duct tape to patch up ripped sofas and carpet.

The hotel has several restaurants and bars, but they don’t get very high praise from other guests and the hotel has a low food hygiene rating of two (out of five) based on an inspection on 13 August 2019 and other guests have reported seeing mice in the hotel’s restaurants and bars. Fortunately, there are plenty of other places to eat and drink in the immediate neighbourhood.

One positive note, the International Hotel is one of the better-located Docklands hotels in this price range. It is right near the centre of Canary Wharf with most points of interest no more than a 10-minute walk from the hotel. It also enjoys excellent transport connections allowing you get to most parts of central London in less than 20 minutes.

Heron Quays DLR station is only a five-minute walk from the hotel and South Quay and Canary Wharf DLR stations are only a few minutes farther away. It is only a seven-minute walk to Canary Wharf tube station (on the Jubilee line). All three stations are in zone two. DLR trains run every five minutes and the journey time into The City is just 13 minutes. There are 18 trains an hour from Canary Wharf tube station and the journey time on the Jubilee line is just six minutes to London Bridge and 15 minutes to Bond Street.

Parking is available but it costs £21 for 24 hours.