Why the Park Hyatt London River Thames will have to be very, very good

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I’m a big fan of the Park Hyatt brand. Out of all the top brands that the major miles & points chains operate, it’s my favorite. The St. Regis brand occasionally comes close, but I would choose a Park Hyatt over most InterContinental, Ritz-Carlton, and Waldorf Astoria properties in the same city.

That’s why I was particularly excited when Hyatt confirmed that London (my second home), was finally getting a Park Hyatt property this year. It’s about time!

There is, however, an issue that this new Park Hyatt is going to face, and the only way that it’s going to overcome this issue is by being very, very good.

That issue? Its location.

The new Park Hyatt (opening 8 October 2024) is located in an area of London called Nine Elms, and unlike the locations in which you’ll find just about every other high-end hotel in London, Nine Elms is neither central nor is it particularly well served by restaurants, bars, shops, or anything else that most visitors to London often like to have relatively close to them.

Nine Elms (as it is today) is quite a new neighborhood made up, mostly, of residential buildings and a few offices, and this means that the only notable places or ‘destinations’ that could be thought of as close (or relatively close) to the Park Hyatt London are the US embassy, the Oval cricket ground, and Battersea Power Station shopping mall.

That’s not really a list of things that’s going to attract guests to the hotel.

There’s a lot of construction still going on in the area (notably a big section of London’s new sewer network), and the area’s infrastructure is a long way from catching up with the number of apartment buildings that have gone up here in recent years.

Put simply, for a major London hotel, the Park Hyatt London is on the ‘wrong side of the river’.

Allow me to explain what I mean by that.

The river Thames runs right through London, and just like England’s north/south divide, there’s a north/south divide in London.

The areas of London north of the Thames are where you’ll find almost all of the popular historical sites, the theatres, the museums, the restaurants (although there are more good restaurants south of the river than ever before), and everything else that London is known for.

To illustrate just how much bias there is towards everything that’s north of the river, here’s a fact for you: The London Underground has 272 stations, but only 33 of these are south of the river.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, almost all of all the truly high-end hotels in London are ‘north of the river’ (if you do a Google Maps search for high-end hotels in London, you’ll see what I mean).

In fact, I can only think of one major London hotel that could be considered high-end which is located south of the Thames and that’s the Shangri-La in the Shard … and that sits just moments away from multiple historical sites (e.g. Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, Borough Market, etc …), dozens of restaurants and bars, and within a very short walk of a major train station and a major Underground (subway) station.

The Park Hyatt London will be joining the Shangri-La as a major high-end property located south of the river, but it won’t have any of the other things that the Shangri-La has going for it.

People are going to have to be given a very good reason to book the Park Hyatt instead of elsewhere, and as the area around the Park Hyatt has very little to offer compared to the areas where its competitors are, that means that the Park Hyatt London will have to differentiate itself in some other way.

Interestingly, it won’t really be differentiating itself on price.

Recently, I decided to see how the pricing at the Park Hyatt London will compare to the prices that the other Hyatt hotels in central(ish) London are charging, and this how I did it.

I randomly picked five Saturday nights across five months of 2025 and checked what each Hyatt in London was charging for their cheapest room on that night. This is what the results were (listed in order of cost for each date):

Saturday 22 March 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $668
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $508
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $430
• The Andaz London – $387
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $375
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $276

Saturday 12 April 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $668
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $554
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $463
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $443
• The Andaz London – $362
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $279

Saturday 17 May 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $811
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $660
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $545
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $480
• The Andaz London – $387
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $334

Saturday 21 June 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $842
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $666
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $573
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $538
• The Andaz London – $414
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $339

Saturday 19 July 2025

• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $1,196
• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $726
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $592
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $561
• The Andaz London – $400
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $317

And here are screenshots showing all of those room rates:

I also picked five Tuesday nights across the same five months to see what the rates look like mid-week, and this is what the results were:

Tuesday 18 March 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $668
• The Andaz London – $578
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $572
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $438
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $430
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $304

Tuesday 22 April 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $668
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $571
• The Andaz London – $568
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $565
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $485
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $388

Tuesday 6 May 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $668
• The Andaz London – $665
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $565
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $544
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $529
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $295

Tuesday 17 June 2025

• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $842
• The Andaz London – $835
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $712
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $696
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $666
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $478

Tuesday 22 July 2025

• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill – $1,129
• The Andaz London – $784
• Park Hyatt London River Thames – $726
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars – $696
• The Great Scotland Yard Hotel – $590
• The Hyatt Regency Albert Embankment – $355

And here are screenshots showing all of those room rates:

So, what am I taking away from this?

Well, apart from the fact that it looks like the Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars is often hugely overpriced, and the fact that it looks like the prices for June & July haven’t been fully loaded yet for all the properties (the Churchill’s pricing is very odd for both of those months and the midweek rates at the Andaz in June and July are ridiculous), my biggest takeaway is that the Park Hyatt London is going to have to be a very special place to be if it’s going to justify some of the rates that it’s charging.

Yes, I know I’m not comparing like with like here because the Park Hyatt should be a number of levels above all of these properties, but just hear me out for a moment.

On all five Saturday nights that I checked, either the Churchill or the Great Scotland Yard was offering rates that would allow a guest to save between ~$130 and ~$290 per night on what the Park Hyatt London River Thames was charging.

On all five Tuesday nights that I checked, either the Churchill or the Great Scotland Yard was offering rates that would allow a guest to save between ~$130 and ~$230 per night on what the Park Hyatt London River Thames was charging.

That’s not an insignificant sum of money to be saving each night, and it would quickly add up on stays of more than a couple of days.

Are these two hotels as plush, luxurious, and modern as the Park Hyatt is almost certainly going to be? No, they’re not. But they’re still very good hotels, and their locations are so much better than the Park Hyatt’s location that a stranger could be fooled into thinking that they’re in a different city.

What I’m trying to understand here is who will be booking the Park Hyatt London River Thames and why?

If you’re visiting on someone else’s dime and can get away with it, perhaps you’d choose the Park Hyatt simply because you can … but even guests who are spending other people’s money usually like to be somewhere that’s both nice and well located.

Why wouldn’t they just book a higher-level room at one of better located Hyatts or, as they’re not spending their own money, pay more for an equally luxurious property that’s more central (there are a lot of those in London).

If you’re paying with your own money, what’s your motivation to pick the Park Hyatt London over the other good Hyatts? Or all the other good hotels in London with considerably better locations?

We know it’s not the nightly rate. So what is it?

This brings me right back to what I said in this article’s headline – the new Park Hyatt is going to have to be very, very good.

The moderately-rich*, and people who have their stays paid for by others, have a lot of choice when it comes to luxury hotels in London, so they don’t need to make do with a property in an area that’s mostly devoid of attractions, nightlife, shopping or things to do.

Everyone else (assuming they do their research) is going to take a look at what the Park Hyatt is charging, compare it to what the better located hotels are charging, and ask themselves what it is that they’re paying for at the Park Hyatt.

If it’s not obvious that they’re paying for something special, they’ll probably book elsewhere, and this is what I think the new property’s biggest challenge will be – delivering something that will make people forgive the property for its very poor location while paying what the Park Hyatt wants to charge.

That’s not going to be an easy trick to pull off, so it will be interesting to watch how life pans out for the Park Hyatt London River Thames.

• Great Scotland Yard Hotel London review (Hyatt Unbound Collection)
• Hyatt Regency London Blackfriars review
• Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill review (Regency Suite)

*Most of the the rich/very rich who visit London won’t be staying at a big chain hotel, let alone at one that’s south of the river.