Hotel No5 Llandudno

The Highest-Scoring Hotel We List in Llandudno

Six hundred and fifty-six guests have rated Hotel No5, and they have settled on 9.6 out of 10. No other hotel on our Llandudno pages comes close to that. Numbers like this do not usually belong to the biggest or the grandest place in a resort; they belong to the one that gets the small things right, night after night, and that is what the reviews describe.

The hotel occupies a terrace on Craig-y-Don Parade, out at the far end of the promenade from the pier. This is the quieter half of Llandudno’s two-mile sweep — the crowds gather down by the pier — yet the bay, the Little Orme and the great limestone bulk of the Great Orme are all still in front of you. The sand begins directly opposite. And the car, unusually for a seafront address, goes in the hotel’s own free private car park.

What the rooms are like

Bedrooms face either the water or the hills behind the town, and the ones looking out to sea are what most people are booking. Expect an en suite, a work desk, and a flat-screen set with streaming apps loaded on it; expect fresh, plain, well-maintained decoration rather than chandeliers and cornicing. Hypoallergenic rooms can be arranged on request, and there are family rooms for those arriving with children. Nobody is pretending this is a Victorian palace — the appeal lies in how comfortably and how carefully it is run.

Breakfast, which is what people write about

Work through the reviews and one subject dominates. Booking.com bands the breakfast here as “exceptional”, its highest rating, and guests return to it constantly. There is a cooked Welsh plate, a continental spread, a buffet, and vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free menus prepared properly rather than as an afterthought. Pastries arrive fresh; local produce turns up where it should. A good breakfast is a large part of how a small seaside hotel earns a 9.6, and this one has plainly worked that out.

A bar handles the nightcap, and a sun terrace faces the water, which comes into its own on the evenings when the North Wales weather decides to cooperate.

A word on the address

Craig-y-Don is a district in its own right rather than an outpost of the resort, with its own parade of shops, its own cafes and a paddling pool on the front that has kept small children occupied for generations. Staying at this end means the walk into the centre becomes a pleasant twenty minutes along the water instead of a dash across a car park, and it means the evening is quiet. Visitors who have been coming to Llandudno for years tend to end up here on purpose.

Craig-y-Don, and getting about

Venue Cymru — the theatre and arena that brings a good deal of Llandudno’s winter trade — is five minutes away on foot, so a show and a late supper need not involve the car at all. Llandudno Pier, at 2,295 feet the longest in Wales, is a walk of about twenty minutes along the front. The canopied Victorian shopping streets around Mostyn Street lie a similar distance inland.

Further afield, Conwy and its UNESCO-listed castle sit six kilometres away, the Great Orme Tramway hauls itself up the headland from the far end of the bay, and the cable car alongside it is the longest in Britain. Eryri — Snowdonia — begins less than an hour to the south.

Before you book

Free WiFi runs throughout the building, the parking costs nothing, and the beach requires you to cross only the promenade itself. Rooms open at about £98 a night. It is a small hotel with a large reputation, so the sea-view rooms disappear early — particularly during school holidays and on Venue Cymru show weekends. Book further ahead than you think you need to.