The Milestone and 41 named London’d best hotels

Travel + Leisure, the prestigious travel magazine, has just published its famous annual 500 World’s Best Hotels list, naming London’s top hotels for 2008. But the top spots are not taken by Claridge’s, the Dorchester or the Ritz, although these famous hotels are also on the list.

No, London’s Number 1 hotel for 2008 is named as The Milestone, a boutique hotel of just 57 rooms and 6 apartments in the Red Carnation Hotel Collection. And it doesn’t end there. The Milestone has also been ranked Number 1 in London in Condé Nast Traveler’s just published Gold List for 2008 - an incredible double first.

Situated opposite Kensington Palace and Hyde Park, “a refined, residential feel, thanks to its intimate size and personal gestures like sweets at turndown”, is how T+L describes the atmosphere at The Milestone, the beautiful Victorian-era hotel, where, in the words of management, “no request is too large, no detail too small”.

Highlights of a stay at The Milestone include traditional English cream tea In the Park Lounge, a gorgeous parlour with sumptuous fabrics and a roaring fire, cocktails in the Stables bar, and dinner in Cheneston’s restaurant, which Tatler magazine has described as ‘a brilliant address to have up your sleeve’.

Guest rooms feature, naturally, London’s most comfortable beds with the highest quality linens; marble bathrooms with great lighting; imaginatively stocked minibars; and the latest, 21st-century in-room technology, including free WiFi and Internet; plasma screen TVs in most rooms; two-line telephones and night-light clips for the best bed-time stories.

Incredibly, Travel + Leisure’s Number 2 spot in London goes to another boutique hotel in the Red Carnation Collection, 41. Situated opposite Buckingham Palace’s Royal Mews, T + L describes 41 as a “discreet and private retreat with a private club air”.

Comprising just 30 rooms, this is a boutique property for discerning guests who know they’ve ‘arrived’ without having to shout about it. A resident-only entrance offers access to a fifth-floor reception. Guests are offered champagne on arrival; in-room massage is available round the clock; and ‘business-ready’ guest rooms offer the last word in comfort and cutting-edge technology.

These First- and Second-place ratings in the world’s two most prestigious travel magazines are a superb acknowledgement of the luxury brand of Red Carnation, which now comprises six hotels in London as well as a Relais & Châteaux Hotel, Summer Lodge, in Dorset, along with hotels in Geneva, Palm Beach, Cape Town the Western Cape and Durban (re-opens 2009).

For more information, and bookings, visit Redcarnationhotels.com.