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Something shifted quietly in how people travel to London. They started staying longer. And once they did, they couldn't quite go back.
A weekend in London used to feel like enough. Two nights, a few landmarks, the rush of a city absorbed in fragments. Now, that same traveller is booking seven nights. Sometimes ten. Sometimes a month. The short break still exists but the long stay is having its moment, and the reasons why reveal something important about how we've all changed our relationship with travel.
This isn't a niche trend. The number of Europeans planning trips lasting between 7 and 12 nights increased by 11% in 2025 alongside a simultaneous decline in shorter stays of less than seven nights indicating a structural shift in travel behaviour rather than a cyclical rebound. People aren't just visiting London longer. They're choosing to.
Here's why and what it means for how you stay.
The long stay trend isn't a lifestyle observation. It's a data story.
The GBTA Business Travel Index Outlook forecasts an 8.1% increase in corporate travel spending in 2026 in UK serviced apartments reflecting a fundamental shift in how companies house their people when they travel for work. Meanwhile, major hotel groups including Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG and Marriott have increased their extended stay and serviced apartment brands from 14 in 2015 to 25 as of early 2026, a 1.8x increase can be observed signalling that the world's largest hospitality companies are betting their expansion strategies on exactly this format.
Airbnb's data tells the same story from the leisure side, with extended stays of up to 27 nights rising consistently and travellers increasingly seeking accommodation that combines the comfort of home with the freedom of a city.
The appetite for longer stays exists across every travel segment including leisure, corporate, digital nomads, families, solo travellers. What's changed is the accommodation format that serves all of them. The answer, increasingly, is a serviced apartment.
1. Slow Travel Has Replaced Landmark Chasing
Travel in 2026 is markedly different from even two or three years ago. The recovery period after 2020 was driven by a simple desire to get moving again. What has emerged now is more considered because travellers who know what they want, are less willing to compromise, and are choosing trips that reflect who they are.
The pressure to tick off sights is fading. In its place: the desire for a trip that actually changes something. To understand a city's rhythm rather than photograph its surface. To find the café that the neighbourhood runs on, the market that operates on Saturday mornings, the walk that locals take after dinner.
You can't find those things in two nights. You can find them in seven. London, more than almost any major city, rewards the visitor who stays long enough to stop feeling like a visitor.
2. Working Remotely Has Made London Possible Year-Round
Remote working didn't just change where people work. It changed where people live temporarily, seasonally, experimentally. A week in London used to require burning annual leave. Now it requires a laptop, a good broadband connection, and a base that functions as both home and office.
Digital nomads and remote workers are finding London to be an increasingly attractive destination, with serviced apartments providing the desk, the broadband, the kitchen for proper lunches, and the living room to decompress in without the transience of a hotel room designed for a 48-hour occupant.
3. The Cost Arithmetic Changes Completely
This is the calculation that most people don't run until they're already on their third extended stay and wondering why they ever did it differently.
Over a seven-night stay, a serviced apartment with a fully equipped kitchen saves approximately £200–£350 on breakfasts alone at London café and hotel prices, morning coffee and food for two people runs £25–£40 daily. Self-catered: a fraction of that. That's before the lunches, the evening meals in rather than out, the bottle of wine from the local Waitrose at a fraction of restaurant prices.
The longer the stay, the more pronounced the saving. The weekly transport cap costs £44.70 for Zones 1–2, frozen until March 2027 which means a full seven days of unlimited central London travel for under £45. That cap works hardest for the long-stay visitor who uses it every single day.
4. The Bleisure Traveller Is Reshaping How Businesses Book
Bleisure being the blend of business and leisure in a single trip is one of 2026's most significant travel trends. The business traveller flying into London for a three-day conference and staying through the weekend is no longer an exception. They're a growing majority.
Corporate travel programmes are showing greater alignment with serviced apartment solutions, reflecting their ability to meet internal policy requirements through professional management, consistent quality standards, enhanced duty of care provision, and improved cost transparency. For the bleisure traveller specifically, a serviced apartment solves a problem that a hotel room never quite manages: the need to function productively Monday to Wednesday, then transition seamlessly into a genuinely comfortable home base for the weekend.
5. London Has More Than Enough for a Week
This sounds obvious. It isn't, to the traveller planning their first visit with a weekend budget.
Westminster, the South Bank, the British Museum, and Covent Garden are four days of content alone done properly, at a pace that allows them to land. Then Notting Hill, Portobello Road, and Holland Park. Fitzrovia's literary history and Charlotte Street's restaurants. The Barbican and St Dunstan in the East. Spitalfields Market and Shoreditch. Borough Market on a Friday morning.
London doesn't run out. A week barely covers the surface. A fortnight begins to feel like the city is opening up. A month and you stop being a visitor entirely.
For the definitive neighbourhood guide to every area worth staying in - read "Where to Stay in London: Best Areas for Tourists, Business & First-Time Visitors" here.
The long stay used to mean one thing: the corporate relocation, the consultant on secondment, the academic visiting a university. That demographic still exists and it's growing. But it's now joined by five other traveller types driving the long stay surge.
The Remote Worker on a Workation Laptop open Monday to Friday. London at the weekends and in the evenings. A serviced apartment provides the desk, the broadband, the kitchen, and the address. The city provides everything else.
The Bleisure Business Traveller In for meetings. Staying for the weekend. Needs accommodation that performs in both modes - professional and functional by day, spacious and comfortable by evening. A hotel room works for neither particularly well.
The Family on a Proper Holiday Two weeks in London with children requires space that a standard hotel room simply doesn't offer. Separate bedrooms. A kitchen for breakfast, packed lunches, and the dinner when everyone's exhausted. Laundry. Room to breathe.
The Returning Visitor Who Wants It Properly Done the landmarks. Done the tourist version. Now wants to actually understand the city, the neighbourhoods, the rhythms, the version of London that locals experience. That understanding requires time.
The Couple on a Milestone Trip An anniversary, a significant birthday, a post-wedding honeymoon city break. For these visits, a luxury apartment in a beautiful neighbourhood delivers something a hotel room never can: the feeling that the city actually belongs to you for a week.
For a full breakdown of why staying central over extended stays makes even more financial sense - read our "Central vs Outer London" guide here.
There's a version of London that you access in two nights. It's perfectly fine. The landmarks are there. The restaurants are bookable. The experience is real.
And then there's what happens on day four, when you've stopped navigating and started inhabiting. When you have a regular coffee order at the place around the corner. When you know which Tube carriage lines up with the exit at your destination. When London stops being something you're visiting and becomes somewhere you're living briefly, temporarily, but genuinely.
That version of the city is only available to the long stay guest. And it's the version worth coming for.
The accommodation format determines whether you get there. A hotel room keeps you in visitor mode, clean, comfortable, served, but fundamentally transient. A serviced apartment lets the city settle around you. The kitchen becomes yours. The neighbourhood becomes yours. The rhythm becomes yours.
That's not a small difference. It's the entire difference.
Seven properties. Seven Zone 1 locations. Every one of them designed for the guest who is staying long enough to need a home rather than a room.
Each D'Montrio apartment includes a fully equipped kitchen, high-speed WiFi, a dedicated workspace, separate living areas, and laundry with a practical infrastructure of a stay that lasts. Every property sits inside London's transport Zone 1, which means the weekly transport cap works at its maximum efficiency from day one, and the city's walkable core is accessible on foot from every front door.
For long stays, the location advantage compounds. A guest staying seven nights in a Zone 1 property saves significantly on daily transport versus outer London and those savings increase with every additional night.
For business travellers on extended assignments, D'Montrio offers the professional management, consistent quality, and duty of care standards that corporate travel policies require without the institutional feeling of an extended stay hotel.
For leisure guests staying a week or more, the combination of luxury apartment space and neighbourhood-level positioning means London reveals itself at the pace it deserves.
For everything the digital nomad or long-stay remote worker needs to know about living and working from London - read our "Digital Nomad Guide to Working & Living in London" here.
Contact D'Montrio directly to discuss long stay rates and availability across all seven properties.
A practical guide based on what you want from the trip:
3–4 nights: The landmarks, one great neighbourhood, the highlights. You'll leave satisfied and slightly wishing you'd booked longer.
5–7 nights: The sweet spot for first-time visitors who want the iconic London alongside one or two neighbourhoods explored properly. The city begins to feel familiar by day five. The weekly transport cap kicks in and saves immediately.
8–14 nights: The returning visitor, the family, the remote worker. Two distinct neighbourhoods are possible. London's cultural calendar such as the theatre, markets, exhibitions, food scenes starts to feel like something you're living rather than sampling.
A month or more: A different kind of trip entirely. This is slow travel London where the city feels like a temporary home, experienced at the pace of a resident. The kind of stay from which people return annually, to the same property, the same neighbourhood, the same corner coffee shop that remembers the order.
For the complete walking guide to exploring London's neighbourhoods over a longer stay - read "London's Best Walking Routes 2026" here.
The structural shift is already underway. Travel behaviour is continuing to move toward longer-duration stays and the data is clear that this represents a fundamental change in how people choose to travel, not a temporary blip.
The traveller of 2026 is not cutting trips shorter to save money. They're cutting the number of trips and going deeper on the ones they take. London with its inexhaustible cultural offer, its world-class restaurant scene, its walkable Zone 1 neighbourhoods, and its year-round events calendar is precisely the kind of city that rewards that approach.
Stay longer. Spend less per day. See more. Feel more. Come back changed rather than simply satisfied.
That's the long stay. And D'Montrio is built for exactly that.
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