A Room With A View

From the outside, A Room With a View looks like a stylish city hotel: it sits along the beach-front promenade in a cream-colored Georgian-style building with beautiful bay windows and elegant wrought-iron balconies. Inside, the boutique offers the luxurious feel of a seafront guesthouse, with bright rooms filled with natural light and understated, modern decor. The public spaces have clean white walls, oak wood accents, and tasteful sea-themed decor, such as framed photos of the ocean, seagull statuettes, and model ships. Chic, classy, and relaxing, the property is geared toward vacation-going couples rather than families or business travelers. 

Located in Brighton’s Kemp Town area on a bustling promenade that runs parallel to the waterfront, A Room With a View offers immediate access to Brighton beach, and it's a 10-minute walk to Brighton Pier, which is visible from the boutique’s windows. The property is also a 10-minute walk to the city center, which means its close to a plethora of dining and shopping hotspots. The well-regarded The Restaurant at Drakes is right next door, and popular The Lanes shopping square takes 12 minutes to get to by foot. The location is a two-hour drive from central London and about an hour and twenty minutes by car to Heathrow Airport, depending on traffic.

Like the common areas, suites in A Room With a View are immaculately clean with tasteful, understated decor and lots of natural light. Furniture like tufted headboards or sleigh beds, swoop arm chairs, and leather loveseats furnish the spaces. Back rooms have views of the city and white cliffs, while front rooms offer views of the waterfront and pier. (The only room that doesn’t have a great view is the single ground-floor room.) All rooms have flat-screen smart TVs and Nespresso coffeemakers, plus a variety of thoughtful extras such as earplugs, USB wall sockets, bathrobes and slippers, and a minibar. (Guests get one free soda.) Bathrooms are small but chic, fully tiled with open, wet-room style showers and stylish vessel sinks. They feature luxurious rainfall showerheads, heated mirrors, towel warmers, and high-end Liberty & Green toiletries. Larger rooms have free-standing bathtubs.

The hotel’s main feature is its free breakfast, which guests find generous and tasty. Breakfast begins with a buffet with cereal, fruit, and pastries, followed by the guest’s choice of fresh-cooked hot dishes, such as eggs Benedict, blueberry pancakes, or smoked salmon. The room rate also includes free in-room Wi-Fi and free parking for one car, but cars are parked end-to-end, so there’s a chance cars will need to be moved to accommodate other guests. 

As is typical of a small boutique, A Room With a View doesn’t offer much in the way of extra amenities -- there’s no fitness center, business center, pool, or spa, and no restaurant that functions outside of the free breakfast. The boutique does not accept pets, young children, or babies and offers no additional beds or cribs in rooms. Some guests also mention that check-in and check-out times are strongly enforced.