InterContinental London The O2 adds a £30 pool fee
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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.
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Tony 
Nate1309 
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Lady London 
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