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10am: Book IHG’s Kimpton Fitzroy London for 38p (or possibly £50)

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IHG’s Kimpton Fitzroy London, the impressive Victorian pile in Russell Square, is 125 years old.

To celebrate, it is selling 125 rooms at the original 1900 price of seven shillings and sixpence, which is 38p.

The rooms are available from 10am.

Book IHG's Kimpton Fitzroy London for 38p

The hotel has been vague about how it works and what it will cost.

Reading between the lines of the small print, and looking at how the hotel currently sells gift vouchers, I suspect that it may be selling 125 gift vouchers, for any date, for 38p.

These will be sold from www.kimptonfitzroylondon.com and NOT from ihg.com.

Once you have secured a voucher, I think you will need to email the hotel and make a booking for a date of your choice. Vouchers will be valid for 12 months.

I am not 100% sure that the price will be 38p

It’s confusing. The PR company behind this says:

“125 rooms will be available to book at the original 1900 price of seven shillings and sixpence (approximately £50 today)”

Now, seven shillings and sixpence – as a direct conversion – is 38p. Is this what the hotel is going to charge? If so, why mention the £50 figure? And why not mention 38p?

What is a FACT is that, at 10am today, 125 rooms will be sold at www.kimptonfitzroylondon.com for a date in the next 12 months.

We are not sure if the price will be 38p or £50, and we aren’t exactly sure how the booking process works. I suspect you receive a gift voucher and can pick a date later.

Irrespective of whether you pay 38p or £50, you are getting a bargain given the price of 5-star London hotels. Rooms at the Fitzroy usually start at £300.

Note that your voucher books into the base room category and does not include breakfast. It isn’t clear if IHG One Rewards benefits will apply. I should warn you that the base rooms at Kimpton Fitzroy are VERY small (from just 15 square metres) although the hotel itself is lovely.

We will try to get one to do a review – let’s see!

PS. I know that we are not giving you much notice of this deal. This was deliberate. It has not been widely publicised and if we had written about it last week it would have been picked up by every travel and deals site and your chance of getting one would be very low.

Comments (292)

  • The real Swiss Tony says:

    In all fairness it was covered in the Evening Standard a week ago and Mail Online – one of the most visited news sites globally – yesterday, so there’s going to be plenty of competition ensuring the website falls over at 9:59:59

  • KevMc says:

    They’re definitely selling them at £50; I had an email from them a week or two ago titled ‘We are selling rooms for £50’

  • John says:

    38p is somewhere between GBP 50 and 60 inflation-corrected (i.e., expressed in 2025 British pounds).

  • mkcol says:

    I thought 7/6d was 41p (a shilling being 5p) but I see it was actually 37.5p

    I’m glad I was born just after decimalisation.

  • Rich says:

    This is a really weird way of drawing attention to the fact that your room rates have dramatically outpaced inflation.

    • Travel Strong says:

      100% my thought!

    • Oviplokos1 says:

      But were they part of IHG back then? Don’t think so.

    • John says:

      This is to be expected. Inflation takes into account both goods and services. Services such as hotel lodging and restaurants are non-tradeables, whereas many goods are tradable. Higher competition due to trade and productivity gains through specialization have had a moderating effect on goods prices. These forces were not affecting services, though.

      Also, there were a lot of quality improvements with upscale hotels which justify price increases. But price indices cannot fully account for that.

      • Will says:

        Computerisation dramatically lowered input prices in many service industries. Eg banking.

        • Rob says:

          Without getting too economicsy, human capital has seen very little in the way of productivity gains in the last 100 years. In fact, as people work less (no more 60 hour weeks as the norm) and demand more money (paying people just enough so they can live 10 to a small room isn’t really on these days), human productivity has got worse – hence prices rises for things with a large human component.

          Anything manufacturing / IT etc has seen huge productivity gains and so prices fall.

          • Dubious says:

            Philosophically you could argue that the definition of productivity has changed…no longer just about work/effort, consumption and life experience.

    • Michael Jennings says:

      Just about all room rates have, to be fair.

  • AndyW says:

    A base room here sleeps one. Is it that, or the lowest category that sleeps 2?

  • Alan says:

    Surely they’re just adjusting for inflation? 38p from 1900 plus 20% VAT comes to £48.30, so close enough to £50? (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator)

  • Ian H says:

    A shilling was 12 pennies, in 1900 seven shillings and sixpence would be 90 pence

    • The real Swiss Tony says:

      Yes, but you had 240 pennies in the pound. Because I mean, why not?

      I’m also going to wager that 125 years ago, rooms in the hotel weren’t en suite

      • Rob says:

        Press release says it was one of the first to open as an suite!

      • Ken says:

        The fact that 12 (and by extension 24) has six different divisors was hugely useful back in the day.
        And having lots of divisors makes it far easier to visualise measures.

        Metric system is however far better for standardisation.

      • Greenpen says:

        But there were rooms for your servants who would fetch and carry your chamber pot!

    • Cicero says:

      £1 = 20/- = 240d

      1/- = 5 new pence

      7/6 = 37.5 new pence

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