An apartment in London is a precious commodity these days: with the city's increasingly dense population and Britain-wide house prices continually rising, London apartments can go for an absolute mint - in fact there's the popular tale of the "snooker table-sized" apartment in opulent Chelsea that is selling for around £170,000 - a lot to ask for an 11ft by 7ft room that used to be a janitor's storeroom.

With such a premium on house prices, even hotel and B&B rates in central London are generally expensive, especially considering the generic, stale atmosphere evident in most hotels: every room a carbon copy of the next, with the most basic facilities offered.

In central London a good location is paramount - but you shouldn't have to pay through the nose for decent short-term accommodation. London short term apartments are becoming more popular each year, granting the occupant the luxury of extra space, better value for money (many rates for full apartments are actually cheaper than comparable local hotels), and giving them the feeling that they're staying somewhere rather than just sleeping there. Short-stay apartments are generally designed and decorated to the highest standards, offering stylish inner-city living at very reasonable rates, granting the user almost a 'taster' of living the high life in central London.

The serviced apartments available in more opulent regions of London are particularly alluring: Kensington apartments offer extremely luxurious surroundings in one of London's most exclusive districts. Canary Wharf apartments are perfect for the business traveller centred in the rejuvenated Docklands area. Expensive, bland, lifeless hotels are a thing of the past.