A room call, lobby door or street door
This is the plainest booking on the site and the one Nell writes most often. You give the desk an address, a start time and a length, she travels to you, and the figure is the one printed on the rates ladder with her journey already inside it. An hour is £250 whether the door is on Great Eastern Street or four stops out on the DLR. Nothing is added after midnight and nothing is added for a Saturday.
Half of what we do out here is not a hotel at all. It is a conversion with a street door and a long stair, a flat over a shop on Kingsland Road, or a new block behind a station where the concierge has seen everything twice. All three are visited on identical terms and at identical figures, and anyone on the board will make the trip.
Suited to room calls
Lobbies, and doors with nobody behind them
The hotel end of this is easy. Shoreditch has more rooms than the rest of the east put together, Aldgate has the Goodman's Fields towers and the studio apartments beside them, and the station hotels at Liverpool Street are a minute from the barriers. She walks in, crosses the lobby and goes up, and none of those desks knows our name or needs to.
The flats take one extra line in the message. Give the street door, the name on the buzzer and the floor, and say if the stair is a long one so she arrives in shoes that suit it. Warehouse conversions off Redchurch Street and Hackney Road are half the work here and none of them has anybody sitting at a desk downstairs.
What the desk needs before she leaves
Four things and no more: the address with the room number or the floor, the name the room or the buzzer carries, the hour you want her there, and how long you want her to stay. Nell reads all four back to you in one written confirmation, with the minute she expects to be at your door rather than a vague window. If the road turns out to be worse than the estimate, you hear about it at the time instead of watching a corridor.
How long she takes to get there
She travels in by road from the west of town. Before seven that run is slow through Clerkenwell and the City, and half past nine is a different city altogether. Thirty minutes to a door in E2 or EC2A is realistic on a weeknight once it is confirmed. The far end of Bow and the E14 basin are the long runs on this site, closer to forty five early on, and the desk quotes the honest number rather than the flattering one.
Which length is the honest one
An hour at £250 is a real booking here rather than a taster, and for a late arrival back at the hotel it is often exactly right. Ninety minutes at £400 is the step most people take second. Two hours at £500 gives you time to go out for a plate and come back. Three at £700 stops anybody watching a clock, and four at £900 is the length people choose once they have done this twice. Nobody at the desk will push you up the ladder.
Names that come up first on a room call
Angelika and Michelle know the Shoreditch doors, including the ones with a keypad and no sign. Lucy takes the late City bookings when the offices have emptied and the walk between anywhere and anywhere is six minutes. Laura is quick to reach anything on the Elizabeth line, and Molly will often take a same evening call in E8 when she has the room. Everyone else on the board comes on exactly the same terms.
Settling, and what the hour buys
The fee goes to her in person once she has arrived and taken her coat off. What you are booking is her time and her company for the length you agreed, which is the whole of what this desk sells and the whole of what any page here describes. Adults only, both sides, and the clock starts when she walks in rather than when the conversation gets going.
Two notes worth reading first
Room calls, in detail
01Can she come to a flat instead of a hotel?
Yes, and out here it is the commoner half of the work. Street door, buzzer name and floor is all the extra detail Nell needs, and the figure is identical to a hotel visit.
02How late can I write in?
There is no hour that is too late. The desk is staffed through the night, and a two in the morning start is priced exactly like a two in the afternoon one.
03Will she be recognised crossing a lobby?
She dresses to be unremarkable in the building she is entering, which in east London usually means dark and plain. She walks to the lift like a guest, because for the length of that walk she is one.
Other nights on the book
The trains stop. We do not.
One message with the date, the time and the postcode, and the rest of the night is arranged quietly, anywhere from Hoxton down to the basin at Limehouse.