London’s Hotel Boom Is Hiding a 7-Year UK-Wide Decline

Among the most talked-about hotel openings of 2026 is a Waldorf Astoria inside Admiralty Arch, at the end of The Mall, according to Euronews. It’s one of dozens of new hotels arriving in the capital.

Outside London the story is different. In the South West, Wales and Scotland, hotel numbers have been falling. Homefords analysed ONS business counts for every UK region. Since 2019, London has added more hotels than the whole UK has gained.

London has added 395 hotels since 2019

London had 1,935 hotels in 2019. By March 2026 it had 2,330, a rise of 20.4%. No other region grew by more than 40 hotels.

The pace is picking up. London added 115 hotels in the year to March 2025, then 160 in the year to March 2026, its biggest annual rise since at least 2010. That’s 275 in two years, more than in the previous six combined.

Hotel numbers in London have risen in 15 of the last 16 years. The only fall was a small dip of 20 during the pandemic, in the year to March 2021.

Hotel numbers by region since 2019

Here’s how every UK region compares. London is out on its own.

Hotels and similar accommodation (SIC 55100), March 2019 and March 2026. Source: ONS UK Business Counts via Nomis.

Six regions grew by 40 hotels or fewer. The East and the South East didn’t change at all. The South West, Wales and Scotland lost hotels, with the South West down 165. We look at that in more detail in our post on South West hotels and holiday lets.

Without London, UK hotel numbers would be falling

Across the UK, hotel numbers rose by 225 between 2019 and 2026. London added 395. Take the capital out and the rest of the UK lost 170 hotels.

Rest of the UK is the UK total minus London. ONS widened its business register in 2015, so years before 2015 aren’t directly comparable with later ones. Source: ONS UK Business Counts via Nomis.

The rest of the UK did pick up 105 hotels in the latest year, but it’s still below where it was in 2019. London’s share of UK hotels has climbed from 11.3% in 2010 to 17.4% today. More than one in six UK hotels is now in the capital.

And there are more on the way

London has more hotel rooms due to open in 2026 than any other city in Europe. Property analysts CoStar expect 5,822 new rooms in the capital this year, as Euronews reported.

The longer pipeline is just as strong. At the end of June 2026, London had 70 hotel projects and 12,912 rooms in development. That’s the largest pipeline of any European city, according to Lodging Econometrics.

Why London is different

The business counts don’t explain why London’s hotels are growing while others shrink. But two things clearly set the capital apart.

The first is international visitors. In 2025, 26 UK local authorities had more international than domestic guest nights in short-term lets. Of those, 22 were in London, according to the ONS. In Westminster, 80.5% of guest nights came from overseas. In much of the rest of the UK, holidaymakers are mostly domestic.

The second is the rules on short lets. In London, a whole home can only be let short-term for up to 90 nights a year without planning permission. The cap was set out by the government in 2015. Nowhere else in England has one, and it limits how many London homes can run as full-time holiday lets.

Holiday lets are growing in London too

London’s registered holiday lets rose from 300 in 2019 to 485 in 2026, up 61.7%. That’s close to the UK average of 60.4%.

But hotels still dominate. London has just 21 registered holiday lets for every 100 hotels, the lowest ratio of any UK region. In the South West the figure is 85.

Demand for short-term lets in the capital is also growing more slowly than elsewhere. Guests spent 21.6 million nights in London short-term lets in 2025, more than any other region. But that was up just 6.3%, the slowest rise of any region. London is also the only region with more pubs than in 2019, as we found in our post on London pub numbers.

What it means if you run a hotel

If you run a hotel in London, competition is growing fast. Thousands of new rooms are opening, including many luxury hotels. Guests have more choice than ever, so the condition of your rooms counts for more.

Outside London, the pressure comes from a different direction. Hotel numbers are flat or falling, while holiday lets keep growing. For the full picture, including interactive charts and a lookup for every region, see our research on the UK holiday let boom.

Source: Office for National Statistics, UK Business Counts (local units by industry), via Nomis, and Office for National Statistics, Short-term lets through online collaborative economy platforms, UK. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Business counts are rounded to the nearest 5 by ONS. Media enquiries: hello@homefords.co.uk