InterContinental London – The O2

It is a large 18-storey hotel with 453 spacious air-conditioned guest rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, comfortable beds, a work desk, a flatscreen smart TV, ironing facilities, an overpriced minibar, tea and coffee making facilities and en suite bathrooms with both a walk-in shower and a bathtub. Several of the rooms are adapted for guests with disabilities.

Suites are much larger with better amenities and separate living and sleeping areas.

There are several restaurants inside the hotel, which include the high-end Peninsula and the more casual Market Brasserie.

The Peninsula offers fine dining with a fantastic backdrop of Canary Wharf and the Market Brasserie is better suited if you’re looking for a more casual dining experience with more familiar food like burgers or fish and chips.

Other eating and drinking options include the ground floor Meridien Lounge, which is noted for its afternoon tea, the Clipper Bar and the Eighteen Sky Bar, where you can drink champagne and cocktails with an eighteenth-floor Canary Wharf view.

The hotel also has an executive lounge with complimentary food and drinks, which guests staying in the more expensive rooms have access to.

A maritime theme runs throughout the hotel, although it is not overbearing like some other hotels (The Liner in Liverpool for example).

The hotel also features a 24-hour business centre and a 24-hour gym plus a 17m- (56 ft)-long indoor swimming pool as well as a sauna, steam room and spa treatment rooms.

Although it is a luxury London hotel, the InterContinental London – the O2 is good value considering the high standard of accommodation on offer and it is much cheaper than the more centrally located InterContinental hotel on Park Lane, particularly if you stay off-season on a night when there are no events scheduled at the O2.

The InterContinental is the closest hotel to the O2 Arena, however, the location feels isolated and despite overlooking the River Thames with views towards Canary Wharf, it is an unappealing location surrounded by barren tracts of undeveloped land.

Although it has an uninspiring location, it is right next to the O2 Arena (with a private walkway linking the hotel with the O2) and only a five-minute walk to North Greenwich tube station. There are plenty of places to eat, drink and shop inside the O2 and also several places to eat and drink facing the plaza outside the tube station. It is also very close to the Up at the O2 experience and the Emirates Air Line cable car (which provides a handy link to the ExCeL exhibition centre) is a 10-minute walk away.

North Greenwich station is on the boundary between zones two and three and it is served by the Jubilee line, which has excellent connections into Central London. From here, it is only a 13-minute ride to Westminster with trains running every three minutes.