Theatreland hotels where the crowd does the discreet work for you

The crowd as cover

Most districts need a little planning to keep an arrival quiet. Soho and Covent Garden do the planning for you. Between seven and midnight the pavements are full, the hotel bars are full of people who are not staying, and the doors never stop swinging. A companion walking into Ham Yard or The Londoner at half past ten is one of hundreds of people doing much the same within a few streets.

The only thing the West End asks of an evening guest is timing. When the theatres empty, the streets fill for half an hour, taxis vanish and every bar is three deep. Plan around that, and the busiest quarter of London becomes the easiest.

Soho's houses

Soho's hotels are mostly small and stylish, several from the same group, and every one of them is used to guests who keep late hours.

Covent Garden and the Strand

East of Charing Cross Road the hotels grow grander. NoMad London occupies the old Bow Street Magistrates' Court, directly opposite the Royal Opera House, with a glass roofed restaurant in what was once the courtyard. The Covent Garden Hotel on Monmouth Street is a townhouse with its own screening room downstairs. St Martins Lane is a design hotel whose lobby feels like a bar, because at night it mostly is one.

Down towards the river, One Aldwych fills a former newspaper building on the curve of the Aldwych, and The Savoy, open since 1889, keeps its famous forecourt where traffic drives on the right. Either makes a grand setting for an evening that begins with a cocktail downstairs, at the American Bar or the Beaufort Bar, and ends upstairs. The Londoner on Leicester Square, one of the newest, puts several floors below ground, which gives its lower bars the feel of a hideaway.

Timing the knock around the curtain

Most West End shows come down somewhere between ten and half past, and for the half hour after that Shaftesbury Avenue and the Strand are at their fullest. If you are at a show yourself, book the knock for forty minutes after the final bow and walk back to the hotel. You arrive first, you have time to take off your jacket, and she arrives to a room that is ready rather than one you are still unlocking.

If she is joining you at the theatre, the night out format suits it: a drink before the show, the show itself, supper after and the lift up at the end. Allow three hours at £700, or the four hour dinner length at £900 if supper is a proper one.

Meeting downstairs first

A first meeting in a hotel bar suits the West End better than anywhere else, because the bars here are genuinely part of the neighbourhood. At The Savoy, the American Bar is the classic choice and the Beaufort Bar the more theatrical one. In Soho, the bars at The Soho Hotel and Ham Yard are full of people meeting friends, and one more pair at a corner table is simply part of the scenery.

The etiquette is short. Arrive five minutes early, sit where she can see you from the door, and order her a glass only if you already know what she drinks. After one drink, or two, the lift is a few steps away, and nobody watching will think anything of two people leaving a bar together.

Small houses, closer quarters

The West End's townhouse hotels have one quirk worth knowing. With fewer staff, the night shift is often a single porter, and in some the street door is kept shut late in the evening and opened on a bell. That is a detail, not a problem. Note the bell in the booking chat, and she will send word from the doorstep so you can let the porter know a guest has arrived.

Corridors in Georgian buildings are short, and old floors creak. Soft shoes and low voices after midnight make you the kind of guest a porter is glad to see again.

Getting about after midnight

Soho and Covent Garden are ten minutes apart on foot, and walking beats a taxi almost every time at curtain down. At weekends the Piccadilly and Northern lines keep running through the night, both calling at Leicester Square, and black cabs gather along the Strand. For a guest sleeping in one district and dining in the other, the walk between them belongs to the evening instead of interrupting it.

Six names, a short walk away

Six companions live a few streets away. Soho supplies three: Jasmin, bubbly and quick; Molly, whose evenings begin when other people's are winding down; and Tiffany, who is drawn to hotels with a history and a few uneven floorboards, which makes Hazlitt's her kind of place. Covent Garden adds Karolina, poised and dry, who has heard enough opera to enjoy it properly, along with Nancy and Tina. Jasmin, Tiffany and Tina all appear on the petite shortlist.

Both districts are Zone 1, travel included. The Soho and Covent Garden pages list hotels and stations in full, and the booking page holds the message to send.