19 Duke Street is the small independent option for groups who would rather stay somewhere with a bit of personality than disappear into a 300-room chain. Set inside a Georgian townhouse on Duke Street, it mixes period features with dark, polished interiors and has a bar and restaurant downstairs for the first drink of the night.

The room set-up is simple but useful. Standard Double/Twins and Spacious Double/Twins can both be configured with two single beds, so friends don’t have to negotiate one double bed, while the larger category gives you noticeably more floor space for luggage and getting ready.

The catch is scale: this is a genuinely small boutique hotel rather than a big group machine. That makes it lovely for a smaller party or a group split across several twin rooms, but less obvious for a huge booking that needs identical room types and lots of communal space. The location, though, is very hard to argue with.