The Kimpton Fitzroy London occupies the former Hotel Russell on Russell Square in Bloomsbury.
The Kimpton Fitzroy London first caught my attention for a fairly nerdy reason.
While looking at IHG award pricing, I noticed something strange. A Snug Single costing about $384 and a Queen Room costing about $429 were both available for exactly 60,000 IHG points. Even the Points + Cash options were identical. The $45 difference between the rooms simply disappeared when paying with points.
In all honesty it was a phenomenon I’d noticed elsewhere, but this case study seemed complete enough that I ended up digging into that separately in IHG Awards: When Better Rooms Cost the Same Points. But an expiring IHG Free Night Certificate gave us an opportunity to do something more useful: actually stay at the hotel.
The pricing quirk was what first made me pay closer attention to the Fitzroy. An expiring Free Night Certificate was what finally got us through the door.
Booking the Kimpton Fitzroy with an IHG Free Night Certificate
Our FNC was literally expiring that day, and IHG allows eligible Free Night Certificates to be topped up with points. That made the Fitzroy a much more interesting use than finding somewhere merely to stop the certificate going to waste.
The pricing quirk added another dimension. Because different standard room categories could price identically with points, it was worth checking what the certificate could actually unlock rather than simply selecting the cheapest room available for cash.
A building that doesn’t need much help
The building’s original grandeur is still very much part of the experience.
Before Kimpton enters the story, the building does. The hotel occupies the former Hotel Russell on Russell Square, a grand terracotta building designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll and opened around the turn of the 20th century. Doll later designed the first-class dining room aboard the Titanic, and the Fitzroy still has the scale and theatrical architecture of that era.
The former Hotel Russell still has the scale and theatrical architecture of its original era.
Hotels like this can be easy to ruin. Add too much contemporary design and the old building becomes just a backdrop for the new one. The Fitzroy mostly avoids that. The public spaces still feel grand, but not museum-like. Kimpton has added color and personality but feels restrained in a way that some design hotels don’t.
There are plenty of unmistakably Kimpton touches, including some fairly playful ones, but they sit within the old building rather than competing with it. The result still feels primarily like a grand London hotel that happens to be a Kimpton, rather than a Kimpton that happens to occupy a grand London building.
A vintage telephone box forms part of the Fitzroy’s collection of historical displays.
IHG Platinum benefits at the Kimpton Fitzroy
We were staying as IHG Platinum members, and at check-in we were offered the usual welcome choice: 600 IHG points or a drink at the bar. We took the drinks. The hotel gave us a voucher with a nominal value of £18. Our drinks came to slightly more than that, but nobody made an issue of the difference. The excess was simply waived.
Kimpton also has its complimentary evening social hour, generally from 5pm to 6pm. We arrived at about two minutes past six. So that was that. It’s a slightly painful way to discover that Kimpton is serious about the word “hour,” but at least the Platinum welcome drinks meant we weren’t entirely out of luck.
Our room at the Kimpton Fitzroy
Our room wasn’t enormous, but the proportions worked well and it was remarkably quiet despite the lively bar downstairs.
Our room was genuinely lovely. It wasn’t enormous, but it didn’t feel particularly constrained either. The proportions worked, the furnishings suited the building, and there was enough personality to distinguish it from the generic upscale rooms you can find all over London.
There was what initially appeared to be a balcony. It was a real balcony, fully outside and overlooking the street. Unfortunately, the door wouldn’t open far enough for us to actually step onto it. So, balcony-ish rather than a balcony.
The street-facing balcony outside our room, which we couldn’t actually access.
Then there were the bathrobes. We couldn’t find them in the wardrobe and initially assumed the room simply didn’t have any. Eventually we discovered them hanging behind the bathroom door, which is an extremely effective place to hide bathrobes from people specifically looking for bathrobes.
None of this is terribly consequential, obviously, but these are the things I tend to remember about hotel rooms rather than the thread count.
One thing that was consequential was the noise, or rather the lack of it. The bar downstairs could get quite lively, but none of that carried into our room. Once upstairs, the hotel was remarkably quiet.
The bar works
The main bar at the Fitzroy, one of the livelier parts of the hotel in the evening.
The bar downstairs was somewhere we actually wanted to spend some time, which isn’t always true of hotel bars even when a status benefit is paying for the drinks.
It’s dark and atmospheric without trying too hard, and there was enough activity to make it feel like somewhere people had chosen to be rather than somewhere hotel guests had ended up.
The Fitzroy’s bar extends into a series of darker lounge spaces.
We chose the IHG Platinum welcome drinks rather than 600 points; the hotel waived the small amount by which our drinks exceeded the £18 voucher.
More importantly, the energy stays downstairs. There is a very clear transition between the busy public spaces and the quieter accommodation areas.
That combination suited the hotel. You could have a proper drink downstairs and then disappear upstairs without taking the bar with you.
Dinner elsewhere, London-style
We didn’t eat dinner at the Fitzroy. Instead, we walked around the corner to the Marquis Cornwallis, a nearby gastropub we’d been meaning to try. There is no shortage of places to eat around Bloomsbury, which is one of the advantages of choosing this neighborhood.
The Marquis Cornwallis has a somewhat unconventional take on British history.
The pub turned out to be a good choice too: a proper neighborhood gastropub, where the steak frites with peppercorn sauce and a glass of red wine hit the mark perfectly.
Dinner at the Marquis Cornwallis.
It was raining when we headed out. The doorman pointed us toward a collection of hotel umbrellas available for guests to borrow. We took a couple, walked to dinner and brought them back afterwards. Again, tiny thing. But good hotels accumulate tiny things.
Rainy Bloomsbury, with one of the Fitzroy’s umbrellas.
Breakfast for IHG Platinum members
Breakfast wasn’t included with our IHG Platinum status. That wasn’t a surprise, and we hadn’t pursued IHG Diamond status simply to obtain the breakfast benefit. But it is worth knowing if you’re comparing elite treatment at the Fitzroy: Platinum gets the welcome amenity, but not complimentary restaurant breakfast.
The hotel did have a grab-and-go setup near reception with coffee and pastries, which was enough for us that morning. There’s also a supermarket almost immediately around the corner and, more broadly, you’re in Bloomsbury. Finding breakfast isn’t difficult.
For us, that made the absence of a full elite breakfast benefit fairly inconsequential. Someone planning to eat at the hotel every morning might value Diamond status rather differently.
Russell Square and Bloomsbury
The Fitzroy’s location is one of its strongest features. It sits directly on Russell Square, with Russell Square Underground station nearby and King’s Cross and St Pancras not far away. The British Museum is within easy walking distance, as are large parts of central London.
But I like the location for reasons beyond transport. Bloomsbury is central without feeling relentlessly central. There are garden squares, university buildings, pubs and residential streets, and at night much of the neighborhood becomes surprisingly calm.
That suited this stay particularly well. We could walk out to dinner, get around easily when we wanted to, and return somewhere that didn’t feel as though it was sitting in the middle of the West End.
Is the Kimpton Fitzroy worth using IHG points for?
Potentially, but I’d look at the room choices rather than simply calculate a cents-per-point number. The pricing I had previously seen at the Fitzroy showed why. If a $384 room and a $429 room both cost 60,000 points, the award system has removed part of the hotel’s cash room hierarchy. That can create opportunities that aren’t visible if you look only at the cheapest room.
The same principle applies when using a Free Night Certificate. If several room categories fall within the same award bucket, it makes sense to see what the certificate can actually unlock before booking. I wouldn’t claim the Fitzroy is therefore always a great IHG redemption. London hotel prices move around too much for that, as do IHG award rates. But I would always check.
Would I stay at the Kimpton Fitzroy again?
Yes. We’d actually been here before without staying. A friend had stayed at the Fitzroy for his birthday, and we’d joined him for dinner at the hotel. I’d liked what I’d seen then and had meant to come back properly at some point.
The expiring Free Night Certificate finally gave us a reason to do it. What I remember from the stay isn’t really the certificate, though. It’s the building, the quiet room, the bar downstairs, arriving two minutes too late for social hour, the bathrobes hiding behind the bathroom door and walking through rainy Bloomsbury under one of the hotel’s umbrellas. The pricing quirk was what had made me look more closely at the Fitzroy. Having now stayed there, I wouldn’t need one to want to go back.