Review: Conrad London St. James Executive Club Lounge

Published May 5 2025, 9:07 AM, Updated May 6 2025, 7:38 PMThe Conrad London St. James has one of London’s best executive club lounges. The hotel is centrally located near St. James Park and Westminster and offers spacious, contemporary guest rooms, a fine dining restaurant, a beautiful afternoon tea lounge, and even an authentic English pub! This club lounge is widely considered one of the best Hilton Executive Club Lounges.

Remember to book any Conrad or Hilton hotels via our luxury travel concierge for extra free benefits. You also get all your usual Hilton Honors points and perks when you book via our concierge.

What Is The Best Club Or Executive Lounge In London?

Tips

What is the best club or executive lounge in the top luxury hotels across London? The club lounge at the InterContinental London has the best club lounge for views (pictured above), and the Langham hosts the best club lounge for food in London. Book a standard room at the InterContinental London Park Lane via our luxury travel concierge (rates tend to range from £400 GBP to £600 GBP depending on the day and the season), and you will get a guaranteed room upgrade and Club Lounge access free. This has got to be one of the best hotel deals in London!

Location

All the other restaurants and bars (yes, and that pub!) can be found on the ground floor, but the club lounge is on the first floor. They highlighted this to us at the reception desk upon check-in, and it’s also clearly marked in the lift. Simply exit the lift, turn immediately left, and the club lounge is just on your left. You access this executive club lounge with your room key. There are limited urban views from the lounge itself.

The 19th-century building that houses the hotel is excellently located right next to St. James’s Park underground station. You are very near to the stunning St James’s Park itself and also less than a mile from Westminster and Big Ben, with Buckingham Palace a lovely stroll across the park. We also walked to Picadilly Circus, Covent Garden, and Trafalgar Square; it really is an amazingly central location!

Style & Character

The lounge is laid out in a series of open-plan spaces. You enter an area with comfortable seating and chairs. This space is ideal if you want a drink or nibble but also want to sit back and relax.

Straight ahead behind this area lies a sofa space with a single large, low table in the centre; perfect for a big family, it has a little privacy so everyone can spread around the table and chat.

Next to these two areas, you’ll find the main club lounge, set like a restaurant with tables and comfortable leather and velvet chairs; It’s light enough in some places to work but intimate enough in others to enjoy a romantic aperitif.

Beyond this area is where you can find the food and beverages. Here, long marble counters line the space with shelving above, there’s a coffee station at one end, and several fridges at the other.

Just off this area is another room with sofas and comfortable seating, and again, a little more privacy. There’s also a private board room space ideal for a business meeting with a large table that seats up to 8 people and a television screen at one end that you can connect your electronic devices to for a presentation.

The club lounge is large and spacious with a comfortable, contemporary feeling. Wooden flooring is laid with abstract blue and grey cloud-like rugs, and the chairs are a mix of greys, blues, and dusky pink.

The walls feature artworks in the same colour palette, and shelving housing object d’art acts as room dividers. Having the food and drink tucked up one end is nice too, as it’s slightly out of the way, making the space feel more relaxed and homely.

Food & Drink

We actually started our food experience at the Conrad London St James club lounge with their afternoon tea offering. We tucked into a range of sandwiches, savoury nuts, and nibbles for starters.

These savories were followed up with a fresh fruit bowl, mini cakes, and sweet treats. The desserts at Afternoon Tea really are ridiculously good in this lounge with chocolate moose, pastries with berries on them, and crème brûlées!

These desserts seem to be on rotation, so one day you get the chocolate moose and the next day there are berry tartlets and creme brûlée, so you never get bored. Of note, the desserts are better in the afternoon than the evening, so make the most of them at this time of day.

The food was served gradually, with different dishes being provided as others were finished. This was all washed down with a pot of tea! A lovely selection of teas was offered and there was coffee too.

The tea and coffee is available throughout the day, as is a huge selection of cold soft drinks that you can help yourself to from their fridges. Our favourites were the Pink Grapefruit, White Peach, and Jasmine!

Following a busy afternoon in London, we returned for the evening canapes, which are served from 5:15 pm – 7:15 pm. Complimentary alcohol was available during these hours too, with a huge range of chilled beers, wine and prosecco, which perhaps is what you might expect in a club lounge.

I was more surprised, however, that they also provide a wide range of spirits including gin, rum, whisky, Martini, Baileys, and vodka. What was lovely too was that the very friendly servers would offer to top up your glass; they impressively remembered what I was drinking and even which of the wines, and would offer a refill when my glass was low! This was really excellent service for a club lounge, where so often the very concept is to help yourself.

The food was just as much of a treat as the beverages during the canapé service. We feasted on a generous selection of cheeses, crackers, charcuterie, and fresh salmon.

There were several canapé bites including a Mushroom Truffle Tartlet, Gnocchi with Spiced Tomato Sauce, and Coronation Crustades. These were just the selection on the night we visited, and I’m sure they would vary on different days. All were delicious, though, so coming back to sample the range on other days is a must-do for us now!

The breakfast service in club lounges is notoriously light and often a much reduced offering compared to the main hotel restaurant. At the Conrad London St James, we were delighted by the very generous breakfast spread on offer in the club lounge.

Every spare space in their food service area seemed filled with yet another dish! There was a choice of three fresh fruit juices, several cereals with a selection of yogurts, and fresh fruit.

There were assorted pastries, breads, cheeses, cold meats, salmon, and perhaps, most impressively, the usual hot buffet items such as eggs, sausages, bacon, and tomatoes!

The hot food was kept nicely hot, and it was all well stocked, and they didn’t run low on anything in the time we were there.

For a club lounge to offer such a good start to the day is outstanding, and we were well fuelled for another day exploring this stunning city.

Conclusion

The Conrad London St James should definitely be on the list if you enjoy a club lounge experience. A hotel club lounge is a cost-effective choice in a city like London, where quality food and drink come at a premium.

But it’s more than this, having access to a club lounge is ultra-convenient and returning for afternoon tea or the canapes sitting really makes the hotel feel like a home from home. The location of the Conrad London St James means it’s one of the best and most centrally located hotels in London, with a club lounge, and the rate is very reasonable for a 5-star London hotel, too. Add to this, welcoming service and some notable other dining options, and you have yourself a real treat of a hotel!

That said, this lounge does not come at the top of our list of the best club lounges in London. The InterContinental club lounge has better views and the Langham club lounge has the best food but is far more pricy. At this price point, the Conrad is a brilliant choice.

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