InterContinental London The O2 adds a £30 pool fee
Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.
I have a soft spot for InterContinental London The O2. It is a good quality hotel which can be excellent value on certain dates.
I took my family there for a weekend break once when it was £100 per night, even though we live across town, because it has a good pool and we thought we’d show the kids a bit of east London.
I doubt I’ll be doing that again in a hurry though ….
As of yesterday, InterContinental London The O2 added a huge fee for using their swimming pool. It would now cost £90 for my wife and I, plus our two children, to have a dip for an hour. You literally just get a one hour slot for that price.
This is what the hotel website now says:
“From Monday 25th April 2022, we will be inviting guests to use our facilities at The Spa by making a booking with the relevant prices below:
The Swimming Pool, Steam Room, Sauna, Jacuzzi
(All booking slots for the swimming pool are only available for 1 hour of use)
Hotel Guest Prices:
- Hotel Guests (Adult): £30
- Hotel Guests (Child 5-18 years old): £15
Children can only be booked at the Kids Swimming Pool Hours:
- 9:00 – 11:00AM
- 3:30 – 17:30PM”
There is a £5 discount per person if you a member of the ($200 joining fee) InterContinental Ambassador loyalty scheme. The fee is waived entirely if you are a member of the ‘invitation only’ Royal Ambassador programme.
This pricing is, frankly, madness. It’s certainly a very impressive pool – I called it ‘stunning’ in my 2016 review – but the pool is the only reason that many people stay here if they don’t need to be at the O2. I can’t believe many families being prepared to pay £90 for a one hour slot.
This isn’t the first post-covid money grab we have seen from a London hotel, of course. Many high end hotels – not this one, to be fair – have added a 5% ‘discretionary’ service charge to their room rates as we covered here. Because it is technically ‘discretionary’ it does not need to be shown in the headline price whilst booking.
IHG One Rewards update – March 2023:
Get bonus points: Click here for our article on IHG’s ‘2k Every 2 Nights’ promotion, which runs from 9th February 2023 to 14th April 2023. You can register here.
New to IHG One Rewards? Read our overview of IHG One Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG One Rewards points worth?’ is here.
Buy points: If you need additional IHG One Rewards points, you can buy them here.
You will receive an 80%-100% bonus when you buy IHG points by 21st March 2023.
Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.
James W 
chrism20 
Dilbert 
Darren 
@mkcol 
Dave R 
Rob 
SRTravels 
TGLoyalty 
ADS 
mutley 
DaveL 
milesandmordor 
Lee 
Comments (131)