Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: LONDON SITES

Hi Everyone:

If an international Psychiatric association were to host a symposium in London, where would it likely be held? Where would they lodge guest participants? Something nice, not lavishly expensive, near the symposium venue. If there were to be a big party/dance/reception to close the meeting, where would it be held?

This is for a story that has been dragging its feet (like me) for the better part of this year, and I'm now trying to work on it in earnest. Hope someone can help.

Jude

Hi Jude,

I used to live in London and attended a conference and an evening dinner at the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster. It’s the perfect place for this kind of thing and really nice too!
Apart from the obvious places to stay like the Ritz and the Savoy (which are a little pricey!) I’m not sure about hotels but you could search Google for ones in Westminster and I’m sure it will bring up tons.

Here's the link

Horticultural Halls

Hope this helps…

Sarah-Jayne

If you're talking central London, Jude, then I'm afraid it's going to be expensive. Typical places for this sort of thing are the Grosvenor House Hotel or the Hilton on Park Lane, but they ain't cheap.

Yvonne
(will try to think of some more when I've got more brain power available to me <g>)

I don't know if it still happens, but when my aunt and I spent the weekend in London about 7 years ago, we stayed very cheaply at the Hilton.

Back then, the hotel had special cut-rate deals on the go all the time, through various travel agents. IIRC (and the memory is hazy) the particular deal we got was part of a combined package offered by Easyjet, which included the plane tickets.

Whether that's still true of course...

LabRat (who actually wasn't impressed with the Hilton's room or service and thought for the same price one of the smaller hotels around the city centre could have done much better, probably)

London hotels, no matter what chain, are expensive, full stop. Even a grotty two-star hotel is around £100/night - that's about $175. The only bonus is that most hotels (though not some of the US chains, eg Hilton, Radisson etc) include breakfast. And hotels in London are generally not as good as elsewhere: smaller rooms, poorer service, staff who tend not to speak English very well and so on.

Just about all the big hotels - even three-star ones, such as the Holiday Inn Express - have conference facilities. So your attendees would stay at the same hotel where the conference is taking place.

The alternative, though, for the sort of conference you're talking about would be to hold it at a university. All British universities (probably universities the world over) offer conference facilities out of term-time, and sometimes inside term-time (believe me, I've fought with University conference people over normal access to teaching rooms on occasion!). So university conference facilities might well be cheaper than hotels. In a university you'd get a large lecture theatre (or more than one, if required), and several smaller seminar rooms for smaller workshops, plus a big mezzanine area for tea/coffee. Having been to academic conferences in many unversities in the UK, it all seems to be pretty similar.

To save further on costs, your attendees could stay in university accommodation - again, these days just about any university which takes conferencing seriously will offer new or newly-refurbished rooms with en-suite facilities. Or you could simply use a local 2- or 3-star hotel.

What universities could you use? I've been in conferences at UCL (University College London), KCL (King's College London), Imperial, the London School of Economics (a bit drab) and one or two others. There's also the University of Westminster, London Metropolitan University, Goldsmith's College and several others. I haven't had time to give you the home page for all of these universities, but they're very easy to look up on Google. Every UK university address ends in .ac.uk, though, so UCL would be www.ucl.ac.uk.

Hope this helps.


Wendy

And I thought it was only because we were on a cheap rate £30 deal that meant we got a small room and rotten service and surly staff. It really was appalling. Although I think that we were expecting something special anyway, given it was the Hilton. Certainly didn't get it, that was for sure.


LabRat

When my husband was scheduled to attend a conference in London two years ago, my son and I tagged along. The conference was held at Imperial College . Classes were in session, which meant no university housing was available, but there were a number of hotels there in South Kensington where the attendees could stay.

We stayed at the Grange Strathmore Hotel , which was a lovely townhouse hotel. It was near the Underground, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, you could walk to Harrods... The location was great, our room was lovely, and we had no complaints with the service whatsoever. It's priced at about £100/night, as Wendy was mentioning, but is ranked as a 3+/4 star hotel. If you have to spend that much, might as well stay in a nice place.

Kathy

Rat said:

Ah - well, the Hilton is known for that, unfortunately. When we worked in the UK, my husband practically lived in Hiltons (worked away from home 4-5 nights per week ) and he joined the Hilton loyalty scheme. Anyway, he found out from experience and from getting to know some of the staff very well that Hiltons, while they will usually be anything from 3-star to 5-star, have some rooms which are at best 2-star. Those rooms are usually reserved for anyone booking through Priceline or on one of the cheapie deals you mention.

I'm sure other hotels do it too, but Hiltons are particularly known for it worldwide - there've been enough comments about Hiltons on the Bidding for Travel MBs (a site for Priceline users) for it to be notorious.


Wendy

Hi Jude,
I don't know a darn thing about convention centres and hotel accomodations in London, but I think that fanfic characters shouldn't have a problem paying £100 a night, especially if they're psychiatrists.

And since I've read the first parts of this fanfic, I'd like to nag you to
I'm getting impatient.

gerry

Thank you Sarah-Jayne, Yvonne, Miz Rat, Wendy and KathyM! You've given me invaluable information. My character would be an invited guest speaker so her expenses would be paid by the organization which I would assmume would get a special rate for x number of rooms. I don't know how to do the pound sign, but a hundred of those would not be excessive. Costs would all be built into the registration fee. I may move some things around a bit. Hope you won't mind.

As for you, Gerry., Nag, nag nag. I just spent an hour of writing time on your interesting question about Lex's love for Lois. It's all your fault the story is going so slowly.

Jude