Staying in London with Airbnb.com
3 min readStaying in London with Airbnb.com
London is the most expensive city in the world as mentioned by Daily Mail UK recently due to its high hotel rates, food and taxi fares. However on my recent trip to London, I managed to get away with cheap accommodation. How did I do it?
I booked via Airbnb.com. Airbnb is founded in August of 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world — online or from a mobile phone.
You can get an accommodation at any price point, in more than 34,000 cities and 190 countries. You can rent a room, an apartment, a villa and even a castle for a day to a week, even for a month.
Since I am going for budget, I look for the room for two with great location (near the London Underground Tube Station) and near tourist attractions or places of interest.
Before you start, you can register with Airbnb. Next, you can search your city of interest, key in your dates and how many pax and the accommodation icons will pop up on the map.
Each accommodation comes with pricing, descriptions and reviews. Do read the reviews to get honest opinion on the hosts.
Make sure you always read the descriptions properly. Browsed through the picture gallery of the property and also if there any lifts/elevators to the property. Remember to read if any public transportation near the property and also if the host has any specific rules for the guests.
After reading the property’s description, please read the reviews by previous guests. These are the comments by guests and these are honest reviews by real guests. Guest satisfactions also reveals many criteria of the property so please do read this as we made our decision by reading through most of the comments.
Then, only we contacted the host and the best part of Airbnb is you get to know the host and communicate with them especially for us who travelled to London for the first time.
(Cozy room with host Kido at Airbnb)
We booked our double room at Noting Hill, for only RM 243(around 45 pounds) for one night including service fees. It is just a stone throw away of the Latimer Road Tube Station which is less than five minutes of walking. The host Kido was nice enough to guide us from the station to her apartment.
(Night view from the room)
The apartment is safely guarded with security gate and it is located on the 19th floor. It is a cozy apartment with our double bed room overlooking the London skyline. The room comes with two towels, wardrobe and free WIFI. It is a shared bathroom and toilet apartment and we are free to use the kitchen but we usually spent most our time exploring London so we only use the room for shower and sleeping time. Thus, we spent three nights staying at Kido’s.
(The famous Portobello Market which is only minutes of walking from the apartment)
The beauty of this place is it is near the famous Portobello Market which is around 10 minutes of walking. The weekend market is one of the popular tourist attractions in London and on weekdays, shops are still opened without the market. You can find many restaurants, cafes and shopping boutiques at Portobello Market.
The beauty of staying with Airbnb also allows us to feel and stay in London like locals. We walked through the streets of Nothing Hill and wander around like locals. Thus, at Portobello Market there are many food stalls even during weekdays and the cafes are great places to hang out or for food. The experience are truly memorable and enjoy the freedom of time we have during our stay in London.
(View of the London city from the room)
Our stay was hassle free and we were blessed with the beautiful view of London city during day and night. Kido is an exceptionally friendly host with her lovely daughter and for sure, I do not mind staying with them again.
If you don’t have an account yet with Airbnb, you can sign up using my referral link (www.airbnb.com/c/wng30) and get RM80 travel credit to be used for your first booking. You can also gain more travel credit by sharing YOUR referral credit, and get RM80 when your friend completes a stay with Airbnb.
